Chris Walker
Appearances
Blood Vines
Twisted Vines: 5
Hey listeners, a note of caution that this episode contains mentions of suicide. Please listen with care. Previously on Blood Vines.
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But this loss, on top of the loss of his father, hit him with devastating force. According to Norma, the two events even began to feel linked. The more that Michael and his wife thought about the trial and how he'd been blamed at every turn, the more convinced they became that Jack's testimony could have helped Michael's case. After all, Jack was a seasoned grape broker.
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But the envelope also contained a second piece of paper, a copy of the Article of Incorporation for Corvette Company 1. And while it was common knowledge that Jack and Robert had formed a new company to cut Michael out, only a handful of people would have had access to that document.
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He would have known exactly what parts of the fraud his son could and couldn't have been responsible for. He could have pointed out the lies. It was a startling thought for Michael, whose last interactions with Jack had been underscored by rage and resentment. Perhaps his father had been trying to help him all along, and the timing of his murder wasn't a coincidence.
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Michael and Norma began to believe that someone had murdered Jack so that Michael would take a harder fall. The same someone who had shot at Michael in his own backyard, and that someone was still a threat to Michael and his entire family. So even while preparing for his appeal, Michael decided that he couldn't hide behind his property wall anymore.
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He called Sergeant Capron at the Stockton PD and told him that he was ready to help the police collect evidence against the person he believed had killed his father, his brother. Michael's call came as welcome news to the detectives looking into Jack's murder. Their searches of Robert's home and recording studio hadn't yielded conclusive evidence, but Robert remained their primary suspect.
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Maybe with Michael working for them, they could get Robert to confess on tape. They installed a recording device on Michael's home telephone, and Michael wasted no time in putting his brother on the defense. Here's a clip from one of the cassettes Michael recorded.
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The audio might be a bit hard to understand since the tapes have degraded over the years. The men begin to argue about money, and then Robert asks Michael.
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Apologize for shooting my father, Michael says. And in response, Robert insists that Jack died a different way. This caught the detective's attention because Robert said the same thing about a heart attack on multiple calls, like this one. There would be many such calls over the coming months, which Michael regularly turned over to police officers.
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So rather than focusing the cops' attention on Michael, the letters instead turned their gaze towards another suspect, one who had that kind of access and whose name was coming up increasingly in their interviews, Jack's other son, Robert Licciardi.
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And with each call and each denial by Robert, Michael became increasingly aggressive in trying to get his brother to admit to the murder.
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Michael was saying, are you trying to justify what you did now, that you took out Dad? Meanwhile, the newspapers caught wind of the investigation into Robert, which put additional strain on both him and his marriage. According to Robert's mother-in-law, They didn't talk.
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unhappy enough that she and Robert separated, and Annette moved out. Then, one night in November of 1991, about nine months after the murder, Robert called Annette's parents in distress.
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The firemen who responded placed Robert on a 5150. That's the code for a mandatory 72-hour hold for psychiatric monitoring and diagnosis. As Robert remembers it... I was paranoid.
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He did, in fact, receive a bipolar diagnosis, and the psychologists who evaluated him at the time also noted in his records that he seemed both depressive and delusional. His 72-hour hold was extended to a two-week stay at a mental hospital. And after his release, he began seeing a therapist. But these new assessments raise questions about Robert's antics in the past.
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The most significant was an incident that Joanna mentioned to me that had taken place five years prior, when Robert was in the throes of addiction.
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It hadn't escaped the detective's notice that he'd been acting suspiciously throughout their investigation, even during the time they'd been focused on the neighbor, Albert. Why couldn't Robert be bothered to come down to the station and help them identify the gun they'd recovered? And on the morning of the murder, why hadn't he tried to resuscitate his father upon finding him unconscious?
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I pulled the police report from 1986, and it shows that Stockton police officers, not SWAT, responded to a call about a domestic disturbance at Jack's house. The officers found Robert locked in his parents' bathroom and screaming nonsense.
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The story they gathered from Jacqueline, who was at home with her parents at the time, was that sometime after midnight, Robert allegedly came over to the house brandishing a rifle. He demanded some kind of paperwork from his father, and according to the story in the police report, he, quote, had the rifle pointed at Jack, Mary, and Jacqueline, and he was ranting and raving.
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Robert reportedly went back and forth to his own house multiple times before finally locking himself in his parents' bathroom. When asked to confirm these details, Jack and Mary didn't refute the story, although when officers coaxed Robert out of the bathroom, they found him unarmed.
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So now that Robert had been placed on a mental health hold, there was concern that his earlier troubles had more dimensions to them than a mere cocaine addiction. And Robert's mood swings were becoming more evident, especially in his marriage to his second wife, Annette. After temporarily separating, the couple had gotten back together.
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Apparently, Robert had tricked Annette into signing a divorce agreement, an agreement he wrote himself in which he gave Annette no money. Robert knew some legal language after all. He liked to tell people that he'd gone to law school, even though he'd flunked out in the first year.
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He also used his limited knowledge of the law to sue his brother in civil court, accusing Michael of improperly using assets from the family brokerage to fund his legal defense in the grape cases. This meant that Michael was now being tried in three separate cases, including his federal appeal and his upcoming state trial. Michael felt under attack from all sides.
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He knew that if he could just get Robert to confess to murder, Robert's civil suit wouldn't matter and he'd have one less thing to worry about. So far, his recorded phone calls hadn't produced a confession. But what if he could catch Robert off guard in a place where he felt safe? So he asked Robert to meet him at the family ranch near Ripon to discuss their differences.
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Robert agreed, and what happened at that ranch has been debated ever since. I should note that Robert denies this story, and I only heard the details from Norma. But as she tells it,
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Michael looked at the gun uneasily. He should have expected that Robert would have a weapon on him. But Robert handed the gun over to Michael and suggested they do some target shooting while they talked, just like they used to when they were boys. With the gun in his hands, Michael relaxed. He lined up his shot, slowly put pressure on the trigger, and... And it backfired.
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And more than backfired, the gun practically exploded in Michael's hands.
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Wide-eyed and shaken, Michael's hand went to his cheek. It was a minor wound that didn't need medical attention. So he turned his attention to the gun. That's when he noticed the barrel. And it was packed. Somehow, the barrel had been blocked. Michael wheeled on his brother, who stammered and claimed to have nothing to do with the gun jamming. But Michael didn't buy it.
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As he got in his car and sped away from the ranch, he vowed to never go near his brother alone again. Not without witnesses. Because the episode had underscored something fundamental for Michael. By gavel or grave, one of them would take the fall. On the next episode of Blood Vines, a Cracker Jack agent with a background in white-collar crime joins the murder investigation.
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But his discoveries only amplify the fear and uncertainty within the Luchardi clan.
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Plus, Robert said he'd left his father around midnight, which fell within the murder window, and his alibi after that was pretty flimsy. He said that he and his wife Annette had gone to sleep after he got home, but Robert could have easily crossed back over to his parents' house at any time, even without waking his wife.
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And when brother faces brother, who will come out on top? That's coming up on Episode 6 of Blood Vines. Blood Vines is a production of Fox's Basink. Our executive producers are Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Story editing is done by Alicia Lincoln and Laura Krantz. Blood Vines is scored and mixed by Louis Weeks. I'm your host and creator, Chris Walker.
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This podcast was made possible in part by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. If you're enjoying Blood Vines, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. And please share it with your friends. It really helps more people find out about our show.
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And finally, Robert had gained sole control of the brokerage and considerable financial power now that his father was out of the picture. In the detectives' eyes, all of this seemed extremely sketchy.
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And they didn't even know about the strange events surrounding other close members of Robert's family, like the heavy breather who called Robert's mother-in-law every evening, or the incident Norma described where Michael was shot at in his backyard. But the cops did know that they couldn't wait any longer to check him out.
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Because if Robert had killed his father and was now trying to frame his older brother for the murder, what else might he be willing to do? I'm Chris Walker, your guide in this series about the largest grape fraud in U.S.
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history, the powerful family at the center of it, and how a stunning sequence of betrayals triggered the fall of a California dynasty and forever changed the way we make wine in America. From Foxopus, Inc., this is Blood Vines. When Jack was murdered, only one person was left in control of the family business. But now that Robert ran the show, what was he up to? Was he pursuing new grape deals?
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Was any money coming in? It wasn't clear to the police, nor would it be unless they got access to Robert's finances. So on the morning of March 28, 1991, Williams and Capron showed up at Robert's front door with a search warrant and a squad of officers.
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They also carried a conditional arrest warrant, which gave them the right to detain both Robert and Annette during the search and put the couple in jail on charges of homicide if they found incriminating evidence. So while officers scoured their home, they stuck Robert and Annette in the back of a police cruiser and secretly recorded them.
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I think we're in trouble, Annette says, according to a transcript. Don't worry, Robert tells her. And for the most part, he seems nonplussed. You know what's silly? Robert asks at one point. Quote, all of these guys are going to be surprised when they see all the evidence I have that shows that my dad and I were working together.
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But then, seconds later, he mumbles, I'm glad I got it out of there. It's not clear what Robert is referring to. When I asked him about the search, he just remembers feeling broadsided.
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The officers hadn't found the kind of evidence they needed to arrest Robert and Annette on charges of murder, so they let them go. But they had nabbed every financial document they could get their hands on. Bank statements, tax returns, loan agreements, even grape contracts. The detectives hoped one of those papers would contain the answers to their most pressing question.
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Did Robert have a financial incentive in his father's death? It would take a while to sort everything out, but the bank statements quickly made one thing clear. Under Robert's stewardship, the grape brokerage wasn't pulling in any money. With the grape fraud cases still creating a stir, no farmer winery wanted to be associated with the Lichardi name.
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In March of 1991, exactly two months after Jack's murder, two typewritten letters arrived at Stockton's main courthouse. Both were addressed to the county's assistant district attorney and might as well have been yanked from the pages of a pulpy crime novel. They were creepy. Unhinged. The first letter, which was anonymous, read...
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Plus, there were still whispers that Jack's murder was tied to the mafia, even though the police never found any evidence for that, and neither did I. But it wasn't like Robert was out trying to strike new deals anyway. It appeared he was busy attending to the needs of a different business.
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This is David Koolhoven, a musician in studio tech who Robert hired to help him establish Fast Freddy Productions, which Robert named in honor of a late uncle on his father's side, Fred, who'd passed away in 1984. With Fast Freddy, Robert had visions of becoming a music impresario, the Quincy Jones of Stockton. And his specialty would be music videos, which were popular at the time.
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Robert opened his studio right next door to the music equipment store where Koolhoven worked, and he bought most of his gear there.
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I mean, of course we took advantage of the situation. And Robert took the bait, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on recording equipment. But Kulhoven noticed that his music studio was unusually empty for such a costly venture.
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And once the Stockton police obtained banking records for the business, they too noticed that while Robert had transferred more than a million dollars into Fast Freddy accounts, the business didn't actually earn any money. Was the studio some kind of shell company? Another way to shield family assets in case Michael lost his court cases? Did Jack know about those money transfers?
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Or had Robert been running his own fraud and swindling the family? According to Jack's youngest daughter, Jacqueline, it wouldn't have been the first time that Robert took money without his father's permission. She informed detectives that before he died, her father had told her about another theft, one that involved both of her brothers.
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Apparently, back when they were still one-third partners in the family business, and right around the time Michael was charged with grape fraud, they each withdrew $200,000 from company certificates of deposit in secret. Michael wanted to use the money for his legal defense.
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Robert's motives weren't as clear, but they'd both miscalculated in thinking their dad wouldn't notice, which reminded me of something Joanna told me.
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And according to her sister Jacqueline, this betrayal was actually the breaking point for Jack. That's when he decided to restructure the family business, and there were rumblings that he might even rewrite his will. But while Michael got cut out of the company completely, Robert survived the shakeup by convincing his father that he'd be able to pay off the debt if Jack made him a 50-50 partner.
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Investigators realized that this was the embezzlement that the creepy courthouse letters had mentioned. And in light of this new information, which only family members would have known, they couldn't help but wonder. If Robert had double-crossed his dad again, and Jack had found out, could that be a motive for murder? And what about Michael?
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If both brothers were capable of such deception, could either of them be trusted? At the same time the police were rifling through Robert's records, Michael was under pressure of his own. He was still shaken by the shooting at his house, and his federal grape mislabeling trial was fast approaching. He now faced 12 criminal charges thanks to a superseding indictment.
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And although Lapham and his team had offered Michael reduced jail time if he cooperated as a witness, Michael refused to plea bargain. He felt that he was being blamed for way too much of the grape mislabeling activity when he was really just one small part of an industry-wide problem.
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What about the wineries that turned their heads, that practically begged for grapes labeled Zinfandel so that they could fulfill their quotas? According to Michael's wife, Norma, He just couldn't.
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As Michael saw it, everything had been done with a wink and a nod. The least he could do was set the record straight. Rather than take a deal, he'd take his chances. He'd fight his 12 charges in front of a jury of 12 peers. And maybe he'd redeem both his name and his family's. Of course, here's where we get into the realities of America's criminal justice system.
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And there's a reason why over 97% of federal criminal cases never go to trial. Government prosecutors wield a fearsome arsenal of tools to coerce defendants into taking plea deals. Things like mandatory minimum sentencing, charge stacking, and perhaps the most intimidating, the so-called trial penalty.
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How sentences for defendants who lose their cases at trial are almost always stiffer than those originally offered in plea deals. And whether this system is fair, it's not, is a discussion for another day. Suffice it to say that you need to have enormous confidence, a Perry Mason caliber lawyer, or an airtight defense to join the roughly 2% of federal cases that actually end up before a jury.
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12 exclamation points punctuated that last sentence. As for the other letter, it contained only a single typewritten line.
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And the fact that Michael went for it, pleading not guilty to all 12 criminal charges, well, that stood out. It certainly raised eyebrows among Michael's co-conspirators, who had all negotiated plea deals in exchange for their testimony. According to Steve Lapham,
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Two partners in the grape fraud. Even Nick and Frank Bavaro became witnesses for the state. Here's Frank.
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One of the government's primary targets was the Bavaro's old pal, Michael Licciardi. Michael's wife, Norma, remembers one instance in which Gary Alfieri came over to their house to speak to her husband. Norma was eavesdropping over the intercom, and she became suspicious when Alfieri started asking Michael questions.
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Sensing an entrapment scenario, she stormed into the room to stop Michael from saying anything incriminating.
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Sure enough, there was a van parked in front of the house, the kind you'd see filled with cigarette-smoking agents wearing headphones in a campy spy movie. Gary Alfieri declined to talk to me for this podcast, so I don't know if he really was wired. Regardless, the whole episode gave Michael and Norma a bad feeling.
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But they wouldn't find out the full extent of the backstabbing until Michael's jury trial began in July 1991. Over 10 days in a Sacramento courtroom, the government's witnesses blamed Michael for as much as they could.
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It was signed Joan, spelled J-O-A-N-N. So Sergeants Williams and Capron naturally asked Joanna Licciardi if the letter had come from her.
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That's a voice actor reading an excerpt from when Gary Alfieri took the stand. Alfieri fingered Michael from the start, saying that Michael was the one who'd come up with the idea of using shell companies in order to deceive his father. Nick Bavaro backed this claim.
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Here are voice actors reading the transcript of what happened when one of the government's lawyers questioned him, starting with the prosecutor.
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Mike would tell us. With all of his co-conspirators pointing the finger at him, Michael became the scapegoat for the entire operation. His case crumbled. His attorney couldn't counter the sheer weight of all that testimony. And in the end, the jury found Michael guilty on three types of charges. Conspiracy, mail fraud, and that false statement he made to officials.
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With the verdicts in, Michael faced 51 to 63 months in prison. A judge would decide the exact number at an upcoming hearing. But Michael made it clear that he was going to appeal his case all the way up to the Supreme Court if necessary. This appeal meant that he wouldn't face jail time until a higher court decided his fate.
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The mystery visitor then closed the door and vanished. But in Albert's drunken state... He just was like...
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After all, there were always people coming and going from the garage, even at odd hours of the night.
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And the street outside was swarming with cops who'd been called next door to the Lichardi house. So I go, what did you do with it then?
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In fact, Albert had tucked the weapon into the waistband of his pants, hopped on his bicycle, and headed over to his friend Danny Rosario's house. Danny passed away about a decade ago, but I spoke to his brother Brad Rosario, who remembers this situation in colorful terms.
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Except Albert lied about that. He didn't actually throw the gun into the river. And the truth was about to get squeezed out of him. Because remember how the Stockton police had set up 24-hour surveillance around Albert's home? Well, when they finally spotted Albert walking down Willow Street on February 8th, they immediately brought him into the station for questioning.
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Over an intense series of interviews spanning 12 hours, Albert confessed to having stashed the gun at Danny Rosario's house and gave the detectives his account on what happened on the night of Jack's murder. According to Capron's written report,
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he'd been the first to discover the body and possibly the last to see Jack alive. But when the Stockton police questioned him, Robert said he hadn't noticed anything unusual between the time he'd helped his father get ready for bed around midnight and when he'd found him dead around 10.30 a.m.
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Sergeants Williams and Capron were understandably suspicious of this narrative. But when Albert took them to Danny Rosario's house, he did produce the gun, which he'd hidden behind a sofa in the living room without Rosario's knowledge.
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The weapon was a Colt .22-caliber semi-automatic handgun held inside a black zippered gun case, which matched the description that Jack's daughters had given the police. And while the thousands in cash that Jack normally kept in the case was missing, forensic tests would later confirm the gun as the murder weapon. But Albert wasn't off the hook.
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The detectives returned him to the police station, where they got him to consent to a polygraph examination. Here's part of the transcript, as read by a voice actor. Albert answered no, and the examiner noted he appeared to show no deception. Were you present when Jack Licciardi was shot? Again, Albert answered no, and appeared to show no deception.
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On these answers, Albert did tip off the lie detector machine. Williams and Capron gave each other a knowing look. They had their suspect. And while the DA denied their request to hold him in custody on murder charges, citing reasonable doubt, Albert became the detective's main focus.
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Police reports show that they spent weeks asking as many of Albert's friends as they could find, including Kroenke, what Albert had told them about finding the gun. And in the end, they found that Albert told a more or less consistent story, and he had no clear motive to kill Jack. But perhaps he knew who did.
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After all, he'd failed a lie detector test on the question, do you know who killed Jack Licciardi? And given the way he'd stashed the gun and gone into hiding, Albert seemed genuinely afraid for his life. But afraid of who? The police asked him this question in multiple interviews. The mafia, Albert kept saying.
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When pressed on this, Albert told the police that Robert Licciardi had always claimed or joked, Albert wasn't sure, that the Licciardis had ties to organized crime. And so here we are with the mafia rumors again. But whether or not the rumors were true, Albert's fear was palpable. He told friends that someone was trying to frame him.
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And Jack's wife, Mary, wasn't of much help either since her Alzheimer's was so advanced that she was unable to even talk to the officers. So the question hung in the room.
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And as soon as the police let him go, he disappeared from Stockton, not to be seen for years. And that meant Capron and Williams were back to square one. They were also left wondering, who would try to frame Albert? What to make of his recollections of a woman screaming and a long-haired person coming into the garage? And was there any basis to his mafia mentions whatsoever?
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The detectives hadn't uncovered any shred of fact there. It seemed way more plausible that one of Jack's sons, like the one who told Albert the mafia tales, or the one who was on trial for grape fraud, was behind the murder. So what of the sons? Throughout the investigation, Robert had been cooperative but somewhat unreliable.
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He'd answered their questions about events surrounding the murder, but when asked to help identify the gun, Robert said he was busy and wouldn't come to the station. And Michael had been oddly quiet. In the nearly month and a half since Jack's murder, he'd barely said a word to detectives, which made them wonder. Was he simply distracted by his upcoming trial?
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Was he tired of dealing with law enforcement? Or was he hiding something? So in early March, almost two months after Jack's murder, Sergeant Capron decided it was time to revisit Michael as a suspect. The detective arranged to meet him at his home in La Mirada, and when he pulled up, Capron was surprised to see that Michael's home was built like a fortress.
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When Michael emerged from behind the security wall surrounding his home, he apologized that he'd waited so long to talk to the detective. Things had been scary, Michael said, for him, his wife, and his four daughters. Capron noted that Michael seemed uneasy. In a police report, he wrote, quote, But as they talked, Capron sensed it wasn't because Michael didn't want to help.
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And indeed, who could anyone trust? Because there was another aspect of the murder that no one could ignore, the timing. Jack had just agreed to testify in the grape fraud case and was in the process of scheduling his deposition. You may remember from episode one that when news of his death got out, the lead investigators on the case were shocked.
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He'd been quiet for another reason, a reason that he wouldn't quite articulate to the detective, but Michael broached by way of asking for police protection. As it turned out, he'd recently had a close call, an incident that he didn't mention to the police, but that I heard about from his wife, Norma. She swears it happened like this.
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It took Michael a second to realize what was happening. Someone was shooting at him. The bullet barely missed.
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and it seemed like it had been fired from the street, where there was a view into the backyard. Michael ran for cover before another shot could find its mark, and before he could get a look at the shooter.
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And Norma went to investigate herself. Sure enough, she saw the marks where the bullet had ricocheted, and following its possible trajectory... I dove in the pool.
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Was this an actual attempt on Michael's life? A threat? A warning? Michael and Norma weren't sure, but they were scared. They debated telling the police, but decided against it. Both felt that if they did, the person they suspected was the shooter would find out, and that person might not miss the next time. On the next episode of Blood Vines, as the hunt for Jack's killer continues,
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That's coming up on Episode 5 of Bloodbinds. Blood Vines is a production of Fox's Pacific. Our executive producers are Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Story editing is done by Alicia Lincoln and Laura Krantz. Blood Vines is scored and mixed by Louis Weeks. I'm your host and creator, Chris Walker. This podcast was made possible, in part, by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
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If you're enjoying Blood Vines, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. And please share it with your friends. It really helps more people find out about our show.
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The idea seemed straight out of a Scorsese film. But the feds weren't the only ones to consider an organized crime angle. Mark Urban, the state prosecutor who was scheduling Jack's deposition, didn't want me to record my phone call with him. But he did email me this recollection.
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Quote, there were some rumors floating around that Jack Licciardi and some of the people involved in the fraud had organized crime connections. Unquote. Maybe this was just stereotyping, all these Italian families and the wine business. But then again, Urban knew that a homicide of this nature would start as a local police matter.
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So he contacted Stockton PD to let them know that he would be sending over the financial information he'd collected on the family business. He also passed along some important tips. The first, that Jack's son, Michael, had been indicted by the federal government and was under active investigation for fraud. And the second, that Jack had planned to testify in Michael's case.
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And while no one knew exactly what Jack had planned to say, the question hung like a dark cloud. Perhaps someone, or someones, wanted to protect themselves from Jack's testimony. I'm Chris Walker, your guide in this series about the largest grape fraud in U.S.
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history, the powerful family at the center of it, and how a stunning sequence of betrayals triggered the fall of a California dynasty and forever changed the way we make wine in America. From Fox Office Inc., this is Blood Vines. When local newspapers and television stations first reported Jack Licciardi's murder, some noted that he'd been involved in the wine business. But only in passing.
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Given Jack's role as a behind-the-scenes dealmaker, the press didn't capture his importance to the wine industry. There was no broadsheet eulogy for California's godfather of grapes. But that also meant that reporters missed a more important concern— his proximity to the grape fraud, because that was getting plenty of press. The Washington Post was even calling it the Great Grape Scandal.
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Upon examining her father-in-law's body, Norma Licciardi, Michael's wife, had just discovered a terrible truth. Jack had been shot, and she was standing in the middle of a crime scene. Suddenly, everything about the room seemed significant. And police officers, who'd recently arrived at the home, realized that too. They ushered the family members out of the living room to preserve evidence.
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By the time of Jack's death in 1991, it had become clear that the practice of grape mislabeling extended far beyond Michael and the Bavaros. Investigators had discovered new criminal rings, wineries and growers operating separately from the players in our story, but up to the same shenanigans. This included a medium-sized winery in the San Joaquin Valley run by Angelo Papagni.
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And prosecutors hinted at even more indictments coming down the pipeline, indictments naming big players and threatening stiff penalties. For instance, the Bavaros, they were facing up to 130 years in prison and a $6 million fine.
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Investigators found evidence that they'd scammed not just Delicato Vineyards, but Charles Krug, Robert Mondavi, and Sebastiani Vineyards, all with fraudulent grape deliveries. And then there was Michael. He also faced decades under lockup and a seven-figure fine. And that was just on the federal level. If the cases went its way, the state of California had designs to collect millions in penalties.
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The lawmen had thrown down the gauntlet. As the Washington Post quipped, We doubt even the French would go that far. So the question was, how far would people go to avoid that kind of punishment? You already know that Michael and the Bavaros initially tried to lie their way out of trouble. But would one of them have gone further? Like, say, killing a witness?
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Even though the press missed the significance of Jack's role within the wine world, industry insiders fretted. Who had the gall to take out the state's best-connected grape broker? Some business associates of Jack's ran scared because back then, California's wine industry was incredibly tight-knit, and it was possible someone within those close circles was responsible.
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Even today, some remain skittish on the topic. One grape broker I exchanged emails with seemed game to talk about the past. But as soon as I mentioned Jack Licciardi, I got this response, quote, I like my quiet life and I want to keep it that way, unquote. I couldn't get that person to write me again. In a similar aura of mistrust, so antithetical to what Jack stood for, tempered his funeral.
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All five of his children attended the service, including his three daughters who all lived out of town, as well as Michael and Robert. But other key people in Jack's life, like lifelong friends at Delicato Vineyards, skipped his Catholic service and burial. One friend who did attend was Anthony Scotto Jr., and he made quite an impression on the Lichardis, including Michael and his wife, Norma.
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He almost seemed to be in disguise, and he certainly seemed in a hurry.
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Did he know something about what had happened to Jack, or who was responsible?
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When I spoke to Scotto about Jack's memorial, he didn't mention the trench coat, but he did remember the fear hanging in the air, like Jack's killer might be in their midst. He also remembered something else.
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Robert's then-mother-in-law, who asked not to be identified by name, recalls that Robert and Michael weren't the only members of the family drawing attention at the funeral. According to her, Jack's youngest daughter, Jacqueline, was... Throwing herself on the floor in the cathedral.
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But Norma's mind spun over what she'd seen. Suicide was an impossibility. Jack could barely hold a fork due to his muscular dystrophy. And no gun had been found at the scene, only an empty .22 caliber cartridge. Plus, there was a newspaper spread out on his chest and... Who sleeps like that, with a cigar in their hands? The body looked as though it had been staged.
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It seems a lot of the mourners scrutinized the Luchardi family's behavior. And it was hard not to, with all the unanswered questions about Jack's murder. The whole atmosphere reeked of suspicion. Even Robert's mother-in-law felt ill at ease, especially when, right after Jack's funeral, she started getting strange phone calls.
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She didn't know who was calling her, but she had some suspicions.
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Robert's mother-in-law didn't actually know if the story was true, but at least in her mind, it offered a possible explanation for Jack's murder. And I knew all about Michael. Meaning she knew about Michael's indictment in the federal grape fraud case and the rumored links to organized crime.
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Pieced together with the stories Robert had told her about mob ties back east, she feared that maybe she'd said something to the wrong person at the funeral. Because the calls kept coming. Until finally, one night, she had the idea to dial Star 69.
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The person hung up, and she never got another creepy call after that. But she didn't report any of it to the police. She figured that detectives already had their hands full with Jack's murder investigation. And she wasn't wrong. Stockton police kept quiet when they first started looking into Jack's murder.
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They didn't want to give away any hints about where their investigation was headed, lest a suspect flee or destroy important evidence.
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But I know exactly what happened in Jack's murder investigation because I got copies of something journalists usually don't have access to, an entire trove of discovery material, which was provided during a later trial and includes all of the internal police reports. The paper trail shows that things moved quickly at first.
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During an autopsy, a Stockton County medical examiner extracted fragments of a .22 caliber bullet from inside Jack's skull, which explains why there was no exit wound. He also used Jack's body temperature at the time he was discovered to extrapolate a time of death of around 12 a.m. on the morning of January 19th, plus or minus three hours. So that set the window of death between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m.
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And remember that Robert said that everything was normal when he left around midnight. This left open the possibility that Jack was shot in those three hours after Robert said he'd left the house. The detectives on the case, police sergeants John Williams and Andy Capron, quickly got to work.
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They collected statements from neighbors, from the Lichardi's housekeeper, and from all of the Lichardi's siblings. Well, all of them, except for some reason that's not spelled out in the reports I have, Michael. But from the interviews they did conduct, Williams and Capron kept circling back to a few important clues.
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Clue number one, it appeared the assailant had gotten past Jack's fiercely protective dogs. This suggested a perpetrator that the dogs were familiar with.
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Now, no one could say for sure whether the dogs were in the room when Jack was murdered, but still, that was curious. Clue number two. All three of Jack's daughters, Jacqueline, Laura, and Joanna, reported business problems between their dad and their brothers, particularly Michael, in light of the grape investigation. But you already know all that.
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Not to mention the fact that the bullet hole had been cleverly concealed in Jack's hairline and there was suspiciously little blood. Had someone cleaned up the crime scene to make it look like Jack had died of natural causes? Norma was, understandably, spooked, and she wasn't the only one. When she broke the news of the murder to Annette, Robert's second wife,
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And it seems the police were most interested in clue number three, the fact that Jack usually kept a .22 caliber pistol under the seat cushions of his couch. And that gun now appeared to be missing. According to Jacqueline and Joanna, all of the family members knew about it. Their dad kept the pistol in a black pouch, sometimes alongside as much as $12,000 in cash.
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And to the detectives, the missing gun seemed like more than a coincidence. But where was it? They didn't have to wonder for too long. Two weeks into their investigation, the detectives caught a break through a most unexpected source, a pastor at a local Baptist church.
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He told the police that a member of his congregation had come to him with some disturbing information about a drinking buddy named Al, who had recently found a gun that may have been used in Jack's murder. The pastor refused to reveal the identity of the tipster, but it wasn't difficult to identify the owl in this story.
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The detectives remembered interviewing one of the Licciardi's neighbors, a 32-year-old named Albert Falmasilli, on the day Jack was found dead. At that time, Albert had said that he had no knowledge that a homicide had occurred next door. So now Sergeant Capron raced back to Albert's house to interview him again, but Albert wasn't home. Capron went back again the following day.
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Albert still wasn't home. So Stockton police set up a 24-hour surveillance to catch him when he finally returned. Little did they know that he was hiding and freaking out. Because what I'm about to tell you is an incredibly weird series of events. And to help me tell this story, I consulted two of Albert's friends at the time, Jeff Kroenke and Brad Rosario.
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They were all in their early 30s in 1991. And on the evening of Jack's murder, Kroenke was hanging out with Albert at a friend's house after they'd spent the day helping her move.
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And after they'd partied enough, Kroenke drove Albert home around 10.30 p.m.
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Kroenke watched him stumble down the driveway to the garage, which served as a hybrid bedroom and music area where Albert and his friends would jam. Robert Licciardi even joined on occasion. Anyway, the next morning, Kroenke was woken up by a frantic call from Albert.
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And since Michael wouldn't be straight with him, and Scotto wouldn't investigate on his behalf, Jack was forced to turn to someone else for the truth. Someone unexpected.
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The godfather of grapes would talk to the feds. Steve Lapham remembers feeling surprised when Jack contacted him in August of 1989. With the indictments against the Bavaros already out and creating a stir, it seemed unusual that another target of his investigation would reach out voluntarily.
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Lapham had no idea what the old man would say, but he and ATF agent Greg Barnett weren't about to turn down an interview with the Godfather of Grapes.
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The creepiness echoed what Scotto experienced on his first visit. And then there was Jack himself.
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And he sat on a throne that Lapham doesn't remember as particularly dignified.
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But the bigger surprise was that he wasn't alone. A young lawyer named Jay Gill flanked Jack on one side, and on the other stood his sons, Robert and Michael. Lapham and Barnett saw a golden opportunity. They were still collecting the evidence they needed to file charges against Michael, but now they could question him directly. Would he lie in front of federal agents? In front of his father?
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As Lapham recalls, Jack seemed oblivious to the precariousness of the situation as he warmly welcomed the men into his home.
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Knowing that investigators were poking around his company, Jack asked, is there anything we can help you with? Terrible what the Bavaros did, isn't it? Lapham and Barnett looked at each other. Interesting.
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So they focused their attention on Michael, who was of much more interest to them anyway. They started off easy, asking him questions about his role in the family business. But then they worked their way up to the fraudulent grapes that Delicato had received from V&K Enterprises and F. Rihanna Farms. And right in front of everyone, Michael doubled down on his claim that the vineyards were real.
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Some pushy state agent wants copies of the grape contracts and maps of the supplier's vineyards, if possible. Michael acted as if this were no problem at all, but underneath his calm veneer, he panicked. This was a problem, because V&K and F. Rihanna Enterprises didn't exist.
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As soon as the words left Michael's mouth, Jack felt the room's energy shift. He could tell by the smirks on his visitors' faces that something big had just happened, something that didn't bode well for the family grape brokerage or the inheritances he hoped to leave his children, who were all registered agents of the company.
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One misstep, one wrong word, could cause everything he'd worked so hard to build to come crashing down. So Jack had to tread carefully. He didn't want to risk saying anything that might implicate Michael or the business further, so he kept his mouth shut until the investigators left.
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Then, just two weeks after the meeting, Jack received a most unwelcome reminder that his son wasn't being straight with him. A subpoena. It compelled Jack to send the government every financial document he had related to the 1987 and 1988 grape harvests. And with the court document in his hands, the terrible truth washed over him.
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He, his son, and his company were now the official subjects of a federal grand jury investigation. I talked to some of the Lichardi siblings about that moment. Here's Robert. Do you remember your dad's reaction when he found out about the investigation into Michael? Oh, yeah.
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Then, in early 1990, Jack received another subpoena, this time to testify in person before the grand jury. Jack made no bones about it. He would attend the closed-door session. Joanna remembers driving her father to the federal courthouse in Sacramento on February 9, 1990. He looked even more beaten down as he emerged from the courthouse in his wheelchair.
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Joanna didn't know what her dad had said in the secret proceedings. Anyone who asked Jack about his grand jury testimony couldn't get much out of him, including Michael, who started to show increasing signs of paranoia.
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He asked his dad again and again what he'd said in the closed-door session, and each time, Jack calmly replied with the same line, that he merely answered some questions about record-keeping. But without a way of knowing what his father really said, Michael lost sleep over what might be coming. And then, in August 1990, it arrived. United States versus Michael Licciardi, a 10-count indictment.
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These were just two of the shell companies that Michael and his co-conspirators had created to mask the grape's true origins. Because by now, they had a whole rolodex of fake names to choose from. Need a phony farm? Take your pick from Green Ranch, Blue Ranch, Van Allen Ranch, Corn Ranch, and more. Need a non-existent person to sign some contracts?
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The grand jury went in hard against Michael. They'd charged him with everything from conspiracy and mail fraud to money laundering and tax evasion. And remember that lie he told in that meeting at Jack's house about visiting V&K Vineyards and meeting Robert Klein?
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The last count particularly upset Jack since he'd heard the lie himself. He knew that Michael had become a liability to the business and that recovering from these lawsuits would be a heavy lift. Jack needed to signal to business partners that things had drastically changed within his company. And so he did something that had seemed inconceivable only months earlier.
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Jack asked his other son, Robert, if he'd take over Michael's job and become not only his new legs, but also his 50-50 partner in the business. This restructuring triggered a tectonic shift in the Luchardi's world. Because, as Robert notes, it meant that... He was cutting Michael out of the business. In fact, Jack and Robert formed an entirely new company.
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They named it Corvette Company One, to differentiate themselves from the old company, Corvette, which the government had named in its case against Michael. That way, if Michael was penalized, the family fortune and everything Jack had built for his children might survive.
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But it was a hard pill for the other Lichardi siblings to swallow. Robert, co-running the company, Robert the playboy, who had wrestled with addiction for far longer than he'd been clean, could he really handle the pressure of running a company in the midst of a crisis? To his sisters, like Joanna, it seemed like their youngest brother was making his own bald-faced cash grab.
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like a Porsche he had recently bought. Jack wasn't blind to the risks. He reassured his children that he had a plan. But while his daughters tried to muster some trust, Michael was beside himself. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined his father replacing him with Robert. How dare he, after all the work Michael had done while his youngest brother slacked off.
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And when Michael considered all the sacrifices he'd made, all the years he'd given to the company, it was beyond infuriating. It was insulting. So even though Jack posted Michael's $100,000 bail and made it clear that he still wanted Michael, Norma, and their girls to celebrate Christmas with the family, Michael refused to attend.
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He claimed his lawyer advised against it, which didn't sit well with Jack.
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Jack knew that Michael was suspicious about him testifying in front of the grand jury and angry that he'd created a new company with Robert. But not spending Christmas together? It was unthinkable. The holiday had always been the most joyous time of year in the Lichardi home.
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Meet Linda Bratton, Richard Patterson, Frank Betancourt, and George Garcia. Those two fake vineyards that the state and ATF were asking about? That was just the tip of the iceberg. So as soon as he finished reassuring the Delicato execs that everything was under control, Michael called an urgent meeting with his co-conspirators.
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Or bringing in fruit and other treats. It was a time when winemakers would come to the house, pop a cork, and show off what they'd made with the grapes Jack had brokered for them. There was a shared pride in those wines. But this year, with the Lichardi name tainted by rumors of grape fraud, no one came bearing presents for the pariah of the wine world.
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Jack's house felt eerily quiet, especially with the absence of his oldest son. The patriarch had always been the one to hold the family together, but now he could feel it pulling apart at the seams. His children were all fighting, his wife was sadly losing her mind, and his eldest son wouldn't even talk to him. In Jack's mind, this situation could not stand.
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And it was in the midst of all this turmoil that Jack was forced to make a fateful decision. Right around New Year's, the California Attorney General's office called him and asked if Jack would testify in their civil case against Michael, not in front of a grand jury this time, but in a deposition.
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Jack knew that this could further incriminate his son and his business, but he also recognized an opportunity to make a moral stand. This was a chance to reestablish trust within the industry. Perhaps he could even knit the family back together stronger in the end. So with a heavy heart, he made a decision.
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He told the state, yes, I'll testify, and put the deputy AG, a man named Mark Urban, in touch with his lawyer. Urban was thrilled. Jack was the best connected witness they'd have under oath. His testimony might expose wider misdeeds in the industry and bigger players. Because day by day, investigators were learning that more wineries were involved in grape mislabeling than they initially suspected.
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What did Jack know? Who might he name? The state would find out soon enough, just as soon as they could schedule a day for the deposition. Around 10 a.m. on the morning of January 19, 1991, Robert woke up and walked across the street to his parents' house like he always did.
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And after tending to his mom, he entered the living room where his father slept, with a newspaper sprawled out across his chest. As a night owl, it wasn't unusual for Jack to sleep past 10 a.m. But when Jack didn't so much as stir...
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Do these details sound familiar? I'm sure you already know where I'm going with this. Robert says he panicked at the sight of his father, and rather than try to resuscitate him... I'm just not trained in any kind of rescue thing.
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They gathered in secret at an isolated vineyard that Michael did business with near Stockton. As dusk approached, Nick Bavaro showed up, looking annoyed, since it was his birthday, followed shortly by two other growers who'd recently joined the scheme, Joseph Du and Gary Alfieri. In fact, it was Alfieri who'd come up with the name V&K Enterprises.
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And as he waited for an ambulance to arrive, he called Michael and his wife, Norma, the other local members of the family, and told them to come over, quick. Here's Norma Licciardi recalling their arrival.
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the paramedics gave their condolences. Jack was dead. And as the family tried to make sense of it, they remembered that Jack had had a heart attack a few years earlier. Maybe with all the stress of the grape lawsuits against his son and his company, he'd had another during the night. The coroner would make the final determinations.
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The thin ribbon of red caught Norma's attention. What the? She looked closer, her eyes following the trail of blood back to its source, and then she gasped. The blood originated from a small hole next to Jack's left temple, a wound nearly concealed due to its location at his hairline. Fear welled up inside her.
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A bullet hole. The coroner may not have arrived yet, but one thing was already apparent. This wasn't a heart attack. Jack Licciardi had been murdered. On the next episode of Blood Vines. He goes, Jeff, you'll never guess what's going on outside.
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That's coming up on Episode 4 of Blood Vines. Blood Vines is a production of Foxopus Inc. Our executive producers are Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Story editing is done by Alicia Lincoln and Laura Krantz. Blood Vines is scored and mixed by Louis Weeks. I'm your host and creator, Chris Walker. This podcast was made possible in part by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
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If you're enjoying Blood Vines, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. And please share it with your friends. It really helps more people find out about our show.
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He declined my request for an interview, but as he admitted to government officials, "...the name Viviano & Klein was on the door next to my dentist. I happened to see that. It sounded good." The gathered men looked at Michael expectantly. When he filled them in on the state's inquiry, their faces dropped. Damn. The investigators were getting awfully close to exposing their fake businesses.
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Was this it? Was their whole jig up? They studied each other's body language for clues, and collectively, they came to a decision. No, they couldn't stop now. They'd already lined up big orders for the 88 and 89 harvests. And last season, they'd brought in millions. Alfieri wanted to pay off some farming debts. Michael began construction on a lavish house in a nice neighborhood of Stockton.
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And Frank Bavaro, well, he wasn't at the meeting, but the 27-year-old had recently splurged on a Ferrari, even if the sports car was a tad conspicuous for the narrow farming roads of San Joaquin County. Each had amassed dazzling amounts of cash in a region prone to hard times. America's addiction to white Zinfandel had transformed their lives.
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They couldn't give that up just because some dopey agent, who clearly didn't know the full scope of their operation, was asking a few questions. So the men came up with a plan. It'd go like this. Step 1. Michael would send a letter to Nick asking for maps of the vineyards. Step 2. Nick would draw fake maps showing Zinfandel growing on the made-up farms. Step 3.
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Alfieri would create a convincing paper trail between the Bavaros, Michael, and a fictitious Robert Klein in San Francisco, the K in VNK. And step four, they'd forward all of this to Delicato so the winery could turn it over to the state agent. Nice and simple. When the meeting adjourned, Michael left feeling nervous but optimistic.
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He sent off the first letter to Nick, initiating the deceptive paper trail. That should fool them, he hoped. It didn't. By the time everything circled back to the state regulator Gene Arthur and his federal counterparts, they could barely contain their smiles. Arthur passed away long ago, so I couldn't interview him to get his recollections.
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But I learned that when he initially reached out to Delicato, he held no doubts that the deliveries were misrepresented. His team had tracked those shipments from field to winery and watched the fraud unfold with their own eyes. So the real reason he asked Delicato for documentation? To get those jabronis to commit mail fraud. Which is precisely what they did.
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So now, with this all but guaranteed charge for mail fraud in the bag, Arthur and his federal partners felt ready to crank up the heat. The case they were about to drop would shatter relationships up and down California and throughout the entire wine industry. I'm Chris Walker, your guide in this series about the largest grape fraud in U.S.
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history, the powerful family at the center of it, and how a stunning sequence of betrayals triggered the fall of a California dynasty and forever changed the way we make wine in America. From Fox's Basinck, this is Blood Vines. Jack Licciardi may have been cooped up at home with muscular dystrophy, but he was still the brains of his family business.
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It wasn't long before he found out about the state's inquiry at Delicato. Jack wondered if something untoward had happened during Michael's dealings with the Bavaros. He even froze a check for $150,000 made out to V&K Enterprises out of caution. But when he asked his son about it, Michael swore up and down that the deliveries in question were legit. This was all a big misunderstanding, he said.
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It would all be cleared up as soon as they got the maps and other requested documents to Delicato. Jack wanted to believe his son, but in light of the state's inquiry, certain things seemed to take on new significance. Like Michael's new house, or should I say, mansion, which he'd recently built for himself, his wife, and four daughters in an exclusive neighborhood of Stockton called La Mirada.
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That was Joanna LeChardy, Jack's middle daughter, recalling the first time she and her father visited Michael's new place.
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Jack and his wife Mary still lived in the same 1,400-square-foot house that they'd raised five children in. By contrast, Michael's luxury crib seemed excessive and highly suspicious. The whole family had heard Michael's grumblings about being underpaid. So where did the money to build this house come from?
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After all, Michael was known to be the responsible one in the family, and the son Jack relied upon most, at least at work. Michael was dependable.
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He would go and take care of the business, you know. And Michael seemed especially responsible when compared to the only other Lichardi sibling who still lived in Stockton and the only other full partner of the great brokerage, his younger brother, Robert.
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On a late September day in 1988, Delicato Vineyards received an urgent letter from the California Department of Food and Agriculture. It caught the winery's undivided attention. A regulatory agent named Gene Arthur wrote that his agency, along with the ATF, suspected that Delicato had been scammed.
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The younger LeChardy was a playboy, a loud, unwieldy personality who drove fast cars, loved to gamble, and wailed on the electric guitar in various garage bands. He was always a bit of a loose cannon, but in his 20s, a cocaine habit turned into a full-blown addiction, Robert's first marriage imploded, and he went off the deep end.
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But through it all, Jack supported his son. And after Robert got clean, Jack gave him a chance to redeem himself by becoming his parents' caregiver. Because Jack wasn't the only one with a disability. His wife, Mary, had become incapacitated with Alzheimer's. It had progressed to the point that she no longer recognized names or faces and was liable to wander the streets in a daze.
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And since Robert happened to live across the street from his parents, Jack asked his son to help him and his mom Mary with daily tasks that were difficult for them to perform on their own, like eating or changing their clothes. Jack saw it as a way to keep Robert on the straight and narrow and finally teach his youngest son some responsibility.
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Because even though Robert was technically a one-third partner in Corvette Company, everyone knew Michael really did most of the work. The father had always trusted his oldest son through and through.
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But now, with the state snooping around Michael's deals at Delicato and the suspicious nature of his new house, Jack couldn't shake the feeling that trouble loomed on the horizon and that even his business was at stake. So he decided to consult someone in the wine business he knew he could trust, someone outside the family.
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Anthony Scotto Jr., who you met in episode two, and who, despite being much younger, became one of the grape broker's closest friends. Jack contacted Scotto and told him about the inquiry at Delicato and his concerns about Michael. Actually, more than just told him, he asked for his friend's help.
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I can't control him. But Jack kept pushing. Come on, couldn't Scotto just ask?
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This was not the answer Jack was hoping for. He resigned himself to the fact that he would have to find another way to get to the truth. But then he began to second-guess his suspicions when the 1988 crush season passed by without incident. The state seemed to have dropped its inquiry entirely.
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After Michael and his co-conspirators sent the fake letters, maps, and contracts to Delicato, they never heard about it again from the winery or from regulators. So everyone breathed a sigh of relief, especially Michael and the Bavaros. This felt like confirmation that no one really cared what they were up to, and they had made out like bandits this season.
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Arthur went on to say that the state had reason to believe that some grape shipments it had received were misidentified as Zinfandel. So he wanted to know, could Delicato get in touch with its suppliers to figure out if there was a mix-up? The winery wasted no time in replying that it was concerned and would help in any way possible. And its executives knew exactly who to ask, because remember...
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Wineries had eagerly paid over $1,000 per ton for supposed... Zinfandel grapes, and sometimes over $1,500 per ton for Chardonnay. They'd sold over a thousand tons of misrepresented grapes, enough to make hundreds of thousands of mislabeled bottles, while wineries and consumers seemed none the wiser.
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Winter passed into spring, and as the first vines began to unfurl their green leaves, Michael and the Bavaros began to look to the 1989 crush season. Why not keep the gravy train rolling? This would be their best season yet. Or so they thought. The first shoe dropped in June of 1989, when the state of California filed six civil lawsuits targeting grape fraud.
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To his relief, Michael wasn't named in any of the cases, but his co-conspirators, Nick and Frank Bavaro, were named in four, and the state-hinted federal lawsuits were on the horizon. Michael figured it was only a matter of time before his role came under more scrutiny, given how the fraud was already making headlines around the world.
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One paper in Panama called the lawsuits, quote, And the New York Times had this to say.
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News of the scandal quickly hit both the Bavaros and Luchardi's businesses like a bombshell.
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That was Mark Lucchese, who worked as the Bavaros company accountant at the time. Today, Lucchese runs a small winery in Ripon called Luca Winery. Go and try his Morvedra. It's excellent. But back in 89, working with the Bavaros... We had a...
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The wineries didn't want to pay for the grapes because no one could trust them.
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Lucchese couldn't answer many of the investigators' questions. The Bavaros ran a tight ship. Even though Lucchese saw the vast heaps of money coming through the company accounts, he says he didn't know the shipments of grapes had been mislabeled. He did, however, tell the feds about some of the payments to Michael, not all of what you'd call traditional.
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Jack needed to convince his clients that he could still be trusted. His first call? Delicato Vineyards, his main customer, whose name was now plastered all over the news next to the words grape fraud. Jack wanted to reassure his longtime friend and winery owner, Tony and Delicato, that he'd get to the bottom of what happened. But according to Scotto, Tony wouldn't even take his phone call.
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And to add injury to insult, the winery ceased all business with Jack and his brokerage and refused to pay Jack the $1.5 million that Delicato still owed on previous grape deliveries. Jack couldn't believe it. Almost overnight, his business, which he'd spent over three decades building, had turned toxic. He'd lost his biggest customer.
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When nobody else could get grape, Jack got grape for Delicato. The flag deliveries all came through Jack's brokerage, which was called Corvette Company. So the winery's top brass went straight to their point person, the legs of the Licciardi family business. They asked Michael, do you know anything about these shipments from V&K and Efriana Enterprises?
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He faced a seven-figure cash flow problem so long as Delicato wouldn't pay him. He felt betrayed by Nick Bavaro, who he'd mentored. And worst of all, he had a sneaking suspicion that his son had been more involved in the scheme than he'd let on. But how far did this rabbit hole go? How exposed was his business? His family? he needed to gauge just how serious things were.
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Previously on Blood Vines Pretty in pink, blush is the word many people use to describe the wine of the 1980s, White Zinfandel.
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This arrangement was the result of a years-long friendship his father had developed with Tony and Delicato, Delicato Vineyard's owner.
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Delicato had promised to deliver thousands of gallons of America's favorite wine, White Zin, even though Zinfandel grapes were becoming increasingly hard to come by. All of it lined up in Michael and Nick's favor, so much so that heading into the 1988 season, they decided to expand their operation.
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This included bringing in Nick's younger brother, Frank, as a reliable man on hand to coordinate deliveries. As the young men figured, why not continue giving the higher-ups at Delicato what they wanted? Zinfandel. At least, on the tags. I reached out to both of the Bavaro brothers as part of my reporting. Nick declined to be interviewed. But I did meet Frank at a farm he owns in Escalon.
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At first, I wasn't sure I'd get an interview. Frank was nervous, skittish. But after drinking a couple beers and fixing an irrigation line between two rows of his peach tree orchard, he did let me turn on my recorder.
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He wasn't too keen to get into the mechanics of the fraud, just how he helped ensure that so many imposter grapes ended up in America's favorite rosé, but he was at least willing to talk about how he justified things back then.
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After all, this wasn't like they were misrepresenting grapes destined for a luxury Napa Valley cab.
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That might sound snobby, but Frank's take on white zin wasn't all that uncommon. If anything, the disdain is even more pronounced today.
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There are a plethora of internet videos just like that, like this one from comedian John McClellan.
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Shop around, and you can even find t-shirts with slogans like, Friends Don't Let Friends Drink White Zin. And for those in on the scam, like Frank, the wine's low-class status only heightened the sense that they weren't doing any real harm. It was just a cheap, mass-produced product, being purchased by people who hadn't yet developed a wine palate.
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While White Zin might have been the gateway wine for millions of Americans, the joke was on them. The ironic little secret that their very entry point to wine was based on a lie, and they weren't even suave enough to know. But the reality is, this sentiment completely missed the point. And hang with me for just a sec here. This is important.
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Because at the exact time this fraud was unfolding, California had only recently passed something called the 75% rule. As it related to winemakers, it was meant to champion the types of grapes they used. As famed wine writer Jancis Robinson explained it to me...
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Newcomers wanted to try all of the Golden State's wines. But because of that buying spree, a grape shortage was causing real supply chain issues. Between 1975 and 1990, demand for all kinds of wine grapes increased fivefold. And while Sutter Home had avoided the run on Zinfandel by buying up grapes ahead of time, other wineries looked frantically for more fruit.
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They're the very names we're all familiar with today. Grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
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The 75% rule, passed in 1983, codified this. It says that for a California wine to be labeled as a Merlot, for example, it must contain at least 75% of that particular grape. So if you see a bottle labeled as Merlot, it has at least 75% Merlot grapes. Syrah, 75% or more Syrah grapes. This was a big leap from the previous benchmark of 51%. And the rule, still in effect today, is all about trust.
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We're supposed to be able to trust what a label says, that a California cab really does consist mostly of Cabernet grapes. The 75% rule even extends to such lowbrow wines as White Zinfandel. If that California bottle says White Zin, it's supposed to have mostly Zinfandel in it. So mislabeling grapes, it undermines this new system.
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It undermines the integrity of the wine industry, with the potential to cast doubts not just on White Zinfandel, but all of California's wines. Most of all, it undermined Jack Licciardi's integrity, a man who'd built his reputation and relationships on the quality of his grapes.
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But even if Michael and the Bavaros failed to grasp the big picture, they knew they couldn't let Jack find out what they were up to.
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Jack had an encyclopedic memory of farmers he'd dealt with and would be sure to recognize anything unusual if deals were done under known aliases. So according to the government, the co-conspirators made up fictitious companies, with fictitious vineyards that Jack wouldn't recognize, like Rihanna Farms, which was actually a play off the name of one of the Bavaro's employees, Fred Rina.
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Other times, they delivered grapes under pseudonyms like George Garcia. And so far, Jack didn't seem too suspicious. Delicato hadn't seemed to notice anything was amiss either, although according to Frank, the winery didn't look too hard.
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But that was about to change. Soon, the public was going to find out what was going on. Wineries would be forced to confront the grape mislabeling souring their industry. And the godfather of grapes, Jack, he was going to ask some tough questions. And again, you didn't cross Jack. Loyal to a fault, he counted honor and integrity among his most important virtues.
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And betrayal, well, that was the ultimate sin. On the next episode of Blood Vines, the government plays its hand.
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But for those in the know, there was a guy that you could turn to during an unprecedented grape crunch, someone with the power to solve the industry's supply chain problems. What the casual drinker might not realize is that the winemaker listed on a bottle doesn't necessarily grow their own grapes. To get all the fruit they need to make wine, many vintners buy grapes from independent farmers.
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So what's a powerful patriarch to do when the empire he built is starting to crumble, he's been put up against a wall, and there's always a chance things could take a dark turn?
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That's coming up on episode three of Blood Vines. Blood Vines is a production of Fox Office Inc. Our executive producers are Laura Krantz and Scott Carney. Story editing is done by Alicia Lincoln and Laura Krantz. Blood Vines is scored and mixed by Louis Weeks. I'm your host and creator, Chris Walker. This podcast was made possible in part by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
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If you're enjoying Blood Vines, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. And please share it with your friends. It really helps more people find out about our show.
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And to negotiate those deals, they need a middleman, a master dealmaker, a skilled arbitrator known as a grape broker. In the 1980s, there was perhaps no better connected grape broker in California than a guy by the name of Jack Lichardi.
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Think of him as the godfather of grapes, a man who knew California's vineyards like the back of his hand and whose grape deals could make or break a winery when he decided what parts of the state got grapes and which ones didn't. At a time when California was trying to become the go-to spot around the world for wine, he had the opportunity to be the hero California needed.
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But there was also a chance that he might also be its villain. Because when evidence emerged of widespread grape mislabeling infiltrating California's wineries, it occurred to federal investigators that Jack was in precisely the right position to orchestrate such a scam. Tips, rumors, and stakeouts all pointed to Jack's company.
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And so before any more false grapes ended up in California's bottles, before any word of fraud got out that sullied California's reputation or momentum, the feds needed to find out what Jack and his company were really up to. I'm Chris Walker, your guide in this series about the largest grape fraud in U.S.
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history, the powerful family at the center of it, and how a stunning sequence of betrayals triggered the fall of a California dynasty and forever changed the way we make wine in America. From Foxopus Inc., this is Blood Vines. It had taken federal prosecutor Steve Lapham some digging to land on Jack Licciardi's name.
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It was still about 36 months before any bodies turned up, and some of his counterparts at the ATF still thought this case was too low stakes to pursue. Wines having slightly different grapes in them. It was still wine, right? What was the harm? But Lapham saw a bigger picture. He knew that grape mislabeling was affecting the entire industry.
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And even while he was grappling with the implications, he learned of falsified grape shipments landing at a winery where a guy named Michael Licciardi handled the deliveries. It didn't take much detective work to figure out that Michael's father, Jack Licciardi, was the real impresario of the delivery business, Corvette Company.
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Michael's own nickname, Jack's Legs, betrayed his status because his authority came through his dad.
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That's $10 million per year, or accounting for inflation, about $26 million in today's dollars. Lots of money flowed through the Lichardi's business, along with nearly unfathomable volumes of fruit. Lapham thought Lichardi could be key to the whole thing. As soon as the prosecutor started asking around, he began to hear lots of strong impressions of the man.
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Picking up where we left off last episode, White Zinfandel was taking over the wine world. By 1987, it was flying off shelves more than 8 million cases a year, and marketers recognized a cash cow when they saw one. They continued pushing White Zin as America's gateway wine, the pink drink that could lure in millions of new initiates. Hey, Mike, I really like this white Zinfandel.
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California's wine industry has always been incredibly tight-knit. Seemed like everyone knew each other. That's still true today. In my own reporting, whenever I mentioned Jack Licciardi, people in the business told me there was one guy I needed to talk to, a guy who knew Jack on the level and might be my best chance of getting an insider's sense for California's grape king and his ascent to power.
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And in the 1980s, one of those old-timers was Jack Licciardi. Scotto first heard about Jack through his dad, who, like everyone, had done deals with the legendary grape broker. Everybody...
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And Jack's experience putting such deals together went back decades. He was a contemporary of Ernest and Julie O'Gallow. The California brothers who built the world's largest winery, which today produces almost a billion bottles annually.
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After all, Jack had grown up around them. His parents had immigrated to the United States from Sicily around the turn of the century, and after the Licciardi family moved to California, Jack learned the ins and outs of viticulture. Over the decades, the grape broker earned respect.
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Part of it was his uncanny knack for predicting wine trends, in which he foresaw what grape varieties farmers should plant months, years, or decades before harvest.
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He was a no-nonsense businessman whose word was his bond. So long as you didn't cross Jack, you'd continue getting the fruit you needed. Winemakers conducted million-dollar deals with him over the phone without so much as a handshake. In fact, Scotto says his own father never met Jack despite 20 years of grape deals.
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From somewhere in Stockton, Jack was this invisible hand who could source fruit around the state, from Santa Barbara to the upper reaches of California's north coast. But Scotto says in 1985... And I'll never forget this. His family's winery went bankrupt and owed almost $300,000 to Jack. Scotto decided to repay Jack before anyone else.
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And so the godfather of grapes sent word that he wanted to meet the young winemaker who'd respected him enough to settle his debts. And moreover, Jack wanted to meet Scotto in person. He calls. I go to visit him in Stockton. Scotto drove to the address. But hold on, was this the right place? Jack lived in a humble little abode.
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Here was a guy doing millions a year in business, and his 1,400-square-foot house looked like it hadn't had an upgrade or coat of paint in 30 years. It certainly didn't appear to be the home of a grape baron. But Scotto brushed it off. What's wrong with living frugally? He straightened his shirt, took a deep breath, and entered the house. His two sons are there.
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Two sons that Jack had brought into the family business a couple years earlier.
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Nice enough, but kind of standoffish, with dark hair and tinted glasses. The two stood like bodyguards around their 63-year-old father, who sat in the center of a sagging couch. Jack didn't so much as rise, and Scotto felt uneasy, a little intimidated and unsure of what to say.
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Actually, it was muscular dystrophy. But now Scotto understood why people rarely saw Jack outside his home, why Michael's nickname was Jack's legs. The disease made the grape broker's every move painful.
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So we developed a friendship. More than a friendship. Over time, Jack would become like a father figure to Scotto. He had all the attributes my father didn't have. And Scotto grew as close as an adopted son. But Jack's real sons? Scotto didn't trust them. Something seemed off.
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Yeah, I like it better. With revenues crossing 350 million in 1987, over 51 wineries jumped on the white Zin train, making it California's top exported wine. This meant wineries needed as much of the Rosé's namesake grape, Zinfandel, as they could possibly get their hands on. And the reality was, demands for all kinds of grapes were shooting up.
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And so Scotto brought up that first meeting to me, not just because it's when a wine legend became his close friend, but it was his first indication trouble loomed on the horizon. He wasn't sure what to make of Robert's rude remark when Scotto tried to shake Jack's hand.
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he also had a hard time getting a read on Michael, who his dad had placed a lot of trust in considering he couldn't leave the house. And while Michael may have done his father's bidding, he also seemed to have his own plans on how the family business should be run, a fact made clear to Scotto when Michael started approaching him with offers that made him feel uncomfortable.
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Scotto felt reluctant to tell Jack about it, figuring this was a family affair. But he suspected Michael was up to no good. And he wasn't the only one. Because as Lapham and his team started interviewing people around the Lichardis, the federal prosecutor was beginning to develop his own suspicions about Michael.
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and Lapham had reason to believe that Michael was making moves of his own, possibly without the knowledge or approval of his old man. While the feds had yet to approach the Lichardis directly, they'd started looking into a couple of other players operating in the family's orbit, some younger guys in the wine business.
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And by all appearances, they also had every reason to make sure that Jack never found out what they were up to. While Jack Licciardi had built a brokerage empire from his command post in Stockton, 20 miles away in the town of Escalon, population 3,200 in the 1980s, two men half his age, Nick and Frank Bavaro, had built a farming empire in a little less than a decade.
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The older of the brothers, Nick Bavaro, possessed a cunning business mind. By the time he was a teenager, he was negotiating deals for almonds, peaches, and grapes like a Chicago commodities trader. And given how small California's wine industry was in the 70s and 80s, it was only a matter of time before the wunderkind crossed paths with Jack.
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And when they did, Nick impressed Jack, to put it lightly. In him, Jack saw the same type of youthful ambition that had propelled him to his own success. He eventually hired Nick to manage the Licciardi's family ranch, a 10-acre Grenache vineyard called LB Ranch. And it was through this arrangement that Nick dealt regularly with Jack's legs, his son Michael.
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The two young men proved to be a dangerous combination, putting the fate of California's entire wine industry into question. To this day, no one will admit being the one to come up with the idea. But here's the government's version of how it all started in August of 1986, based on evidence that Lapham and his team eventually acquired.
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So for Michael to ask Nick to use empty field tags, that was highly unusual, not to mention illegal.
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All kinds of red grapes, which at a glance look similar to Zinfandel.
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The entire industry thrived as Americans switched over from beer and cocktails to wine.
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But even if Nick realized that was illegal, he kept quiet about it. With Zinfandel riding near $500 a ton at the time, and Val di Pena and Carignan down around $100, he and Michael stood to make $400 in profit for every ton of mislabeled grapes they delivered. By the end of 1987, Nick delivered 1,200 tons of mislabeled grapes to the tune of almost half a million dollars in illicit profits.
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He was too good to give up, and they had reason to believe they wouldn't be caught. Because remember, Michael had carte blanche access to one of the nation's largest wineries.