FRISCO—The Secret History

Knox Bronson
  • 5.0 (8)
  • True Crime

Join us on a cinematic journey through the last wild years when San Francisco was still wide-open. The cops ran the town in the Thirties and Bones Remmer ran the town in the Forties.Battles raged between the factions of dark and light in the hidden realms of San Francisco’s power elite, behind the headlines, from the celestial dominions of Nob Hill eateries and private clubs down to the nether depths of the dive bars in the heart of the Tenderloin, up to the Barbary Coast and jazz joints of North Beach and over to the banks and brokerages in the Financial District …FRISCO will bring alive that wild and bygone era of the Cool Grey City of Love that seduced the world.

  1. 6d ago

    33 - The Trial That Fell Apart: The Strange End of the Nick DeJohn Murder Case

    The jury's out, sequestered up at the Fairmont like kings in exile, and Frisco holds its breath after four weeks of front page testimony. Part Three opens with the strange coda nobody asked for — a state Attorney General's daughter kidnapped for an hour and a half, grilled about her father's trip to Chicago, then let go with a mobster's name dropped on the way out. The cops call it a prank. Nobody believes that, and nobody does anything about it either. Then Inspector Frank Ahern takes the stand and finally gives the State what it's been missing all trial: Leonard Calamia's own confession, a hand-drawn map of a barroom, and the names of every man who waited for Nick De John in that basement. But this case doesn't want to be won clean. Alibis collapse on the stand — Catherine Calamia can't keep her dates straight, Sebastiano Nani can't explain a hotel register with his own signature on it, and a mysterious in-law who was supposedly dead three weeks before the murder somehow lets a witness into a basement anyway. The jury tours the murder scene, La Rocca offers the judge a drink. Thirty hours of deliberation takes the jury to seven-five for acquittal — with the jury still reading back transcripts when the District Attorney asks for the judge  to dismiss both the jury and the case.  And that's it. No verdict, no reckoning — just three gangsters walking out the city jail smiling, two more still in the wind, and a District Attorney's decision nobody in the room, on either side, seems willing to explain. Nine dead men traced back to the Chicago Cheese Syndicate mob moving into town, and Frisco never gets its answer for a single one of them.  Some cases close. This one just swirled like mist out into the cool Frisco night and disappeared.

    33 - The Trial That Fell Apart: The Strange End of the Nick DeJohn Murder Case

  2. Jul 21

    32 - Nick De John, Part 2: She Heard Too Much — The Grand Jury, the Garrot, the Girl in the Bay Window, and a Barefoot Kidnapping in Golden Gate Park.

    Fog rolls into the North Beach basements, and Nick DeJohn is still not talking — a garrot saw to that back in May of '47. Part Two picks up the case cold with Freddie Francisco’s break down of rumors in the Tenderloin whisper stream, jumps forward to a judge's chambers where DA Edmund "Pat" Brown torches his own trial rather than let a liar keep the stand, then rewinds to fill in the backstory.  A crab fisherman's wife walks into a police station with an extortion complaint and walks out having cracked a mob murder. Four men plotting in a back bedroom, not realizing the walls have ears — and one very unlucky woman caught listening. The Grand Jury scene reads like  paperback fiction nobody would believe: a widow turning hysterical on the stand, a son dropped at a movie house hours before his father’s killing, and Leonard Calamia — the friend who delivered Nick to the wolves. He runs, changes his name, even gets himself elected an election worker in Albuquerque, and still can't outrun a Christmas package. The trial turns into theater — memories evaporating on the stand, until a secret witness nobody knew existed turns up watching it all from a bay window above the murder scene. And because this story never ends a chapter quietly: a California Attorney General’s daughter is kidnapped when three men jump into her car and make her drive barefoot through Golden Gate Park, grilling her about her father’s business in Chicago. When they let her go, finally, they drop one last name, a mobster on the lam. Part Three, next week.

    32 - Nick De John, Part 2: She Heard Too Much — The Grand Jury, the Garrot, the Girl in the Bay Window, and a Barefoot Kidnapping in Golden Gate Park.

  3. Jun 24

    31 - Lithe Ah Toy With The Laughing Eyes

    In this episode, I tell the story of Ah Toy, San Francisco's first Chinese prostitute and madam. She arrived in 1849 at the age of 20, just as Gold Rush fever was turning the tiny harbor settlement into the wildest and most chaotic city on earth. In no time at all, she became one of the most infamous women in town. Ah Toy was many things: entrepreneur, madam, celebrity, courtroom ninja, a source of fascination for some and outrage for others. She made a fortune servicing Gold Rush miners, repeatedly stood up to the extortionists and self-appointed community leaders who thought the tall, thin young woman from Canton would be easy prey. She used the courts to defend herself when powerful men tried to dominate her. This worked until they rigged the game. Through Ah Toy's adventures, we see a city exploding in opportunity, greed, vice, prejudice, and ambition. For those few brief years, she  outsmarted her rivals gloriously, made a fortune, and never submitted to those who would attempt to extort her.

    31 - Lithe Ah Toy With The Laughing Eyes

  4. Jun 4

    30 - A Frisco Murder On a Foggy Spring Night, the Nick DeJohn Killing of 1947, Part 1

    Nick DeJohn never knew when he had enough.  He’d slipped out of Chicago in the nick of time, so to speak, with a stolen $250K skim in his pocket and a lot of enemies at his back. Safe in Santa Rosa, California, with his wife and children, he could have stayed quiet and counted his money.  But guys like Nick need the action. He decided he could muscle into the gambling action in Frisco. Old underworld connections were drifting west based on rumors that Northern California was opening up, and not just in Frisco. Nick figured he could make a move. Maybe get into the dope trade as well. He had plenty of friends. On May 7, 1947, Nick pointed his big maroon Buick south and drove into San Francisco for the day. He looked at a house he planned to buy, met up with his old Cheese Syndicate partner and good friend Leonard Calamia. They had known each other for years. Their families were close. Nick trusted him. What Nick didn’t know was that Leonard had been sent west by Chicago boss James Franzone to take care of the "DeJohn" problem.  By nightfall they were in North Beach, at La Rocca’s Corner, where a handful of familiar faces waited beneath the glow of neon signs and the haze of cigarette smoke. Nick thought he was spending the evening with old friends at La Rocca's Corner in North Beach. Even top Frisco boss Tony Lima was there that night.  This is Part One of the story of Nick DeJohn and his untimely but unsurprising end, about ambition and betrayal, and the way old debts never disappear.  Nick DeJohn spent the last few hours of his life in a North Beach mafia hangout, surrounded by men he had known for years, smoking, drinking, maybe playing cards. Nick had no friends in the bar. Two days later, police found him in the trunk of his Buick out in the Marina District, while the men who put him there were busy planning their next moves.

    30 - A Frisco Murder On a Foggy Spring Night, the Nick DeJohn Killing of 1947, Part 1

  5. Season 1, Episode 29 Trailer

    29—Belle Cora, Frisco's Notorious Gold Rush Madam Tries To Save Her Man

    The city was young then, all bad whiskey, muddy boots, and men chasing gold like it was salvation itself. Meet Belle Cora, the most notorious madam west of the Mississippi. She came in hard from New Orleans with gambler Charles Cora and enough nerve to tame a town that didn’t scare easy. A sorry of crooked gamblers, desperate miners, abandoned ships rotting in Yerba Buena Cove, and a city where vice wasn’t hidden in alleyways: it sat right at the head of the table wearing silk gloves and diamonds.  Belle and Charles were the kind of lovers that only exist in old crime sheets and whispered stories after midnight. He was a hot-headed riverboat gambler with a pistol close at hand; she was sharp enough to build an empire in a town overrun by lonely men and easy money. Together they clawed their way from mining camps to the top of Frisco’s underworld, throwing lavish parties while judges, politicians, and merchants slipped through the front door after dark. Belle crossed paths with society queen Lavinia Richardson, and Charles tangled with U.S. Marshal William Richardson — a collision that would end with gunfire in a dark alley and a murder trial soaked in bribery and scandal. Then came the reckoning. Newspaper wars, political grudges, vigilante justice — the whole rotten carnival rolled downhill fast. The feud surrounding Belle and Charles ignited one of the most infamous Vigilance Committee hangings in Frisco history, ending beneath the shadow of the gallows while church bells rang through the fog. It’s a story packed with doomed romance, corruption, revenge, and the kind of hard luck that built this town one coffin at a time. This is a bonus episode of Frisco: The Secret History. You can hear part of it free, but for the whole dark ride, head over to Patreon and subscribe.

    29—Belle Cora, Frisco's Notorious Gold Rush Madam Tries To Save Her Man

  6. May 2

    28—A Playlist From Hal Smith To Accompany His Interview On Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band

    Yesterday, I published wherein I interviewed drummer and jazz historian Hal Smith. We discussed the music scene in San Francisco in the 30s and 40s and how one man, Lu Watters and his band The Yerba Buena Jazz Band, saved traditional jazz after the emergence of swing music.  I asked him for a playlist our listeners. He provided this list of songs and youtube links with extensive commentary. Thank you, Hal! Enjoy!

    28—A Playlist From Hal Smith To Accompany His Interview On Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band

  7. May 1

    27—Lu Watters and his Yerba Buena Jazz Band Save Trad Jazz, An Interview With Hal Smith

    In this episode, I interview drummer and jazz historian Hal Smith. We discuss the music scene in San Francisco in the 30s and 40s and how one man, Lu Watters and his band The Yerba Buena Jazz Band, saved traditional jazz after the emergence of swing music. The musicians, the clubs, and how an girlfriend's irate father with a pistol put Lu and his band on the front page, launching their career.  All in all, fascinating story! Links: Hal's website: http://halsmithjazz.com. Books: Clancy Hayes, The Swinging Minstrel. Dustbowl To Disney—The Lost Memoir of Danny Alguire.

    27—Lu Watters and his Yerba Buena Jazz Band Save Trad Jazz, An Interview With Hal Smith

  8. Apr 23

    26: The Ding Dong Daddy of the D-Car Line!

    We are going to look at the life and times of little Francis Van Wie, the Diminutive Dutchman known also as the Ding Dong Daddy of the D-Car Line, the Car Barn Casanova, and the Trolley Toreador, and other nicknames. Francis managed to get hitched eighteen times over the course of his eighty-eight years. He rarely, if ever, bothered to get divorced. He did a stint in San Quentin for bigamy. He started making nationwide news in 1915 at the age of twenty-seven and would continue to do so until he passed on from this mortal coil.  Francis covered so much territory over the course of his life, had so many jobs, told so many stories, and married so many women, as many as twelve concurrently at one point, it’s been a bit of a challenge to map his odyssey.  I believe I have gotten it right.

    26: The Ding Dong Daddy of the D-Car Line!
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Trailers

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
8 Ratings

About

Join us on a cinematic journey through the last wild years when San Francisco was still wide-open. The cops ran the town in the Thirties and Bones Remmer ran the town in the Forties.Battles raged between the factions of dark and light in the hidden realms of San Francisco’s power elite, behind the headlines, from the celestial dominions of Nob Hill eateries and private clubs down to the nether depths of the dive bars in the heart of the Tenderloin, up to the Barbary Coast and jazz joints of North Beach and over to the banks and brokerages in the Financial District …FRISCO will bring alive that wild and bygone era of the Cool Grey City of Love that seduced the world.

Information

  • Creator
    Knox Bronson
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    35
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 FRISCO—The Secret History
  • Show Website
    FRISCO—The Secret History

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