but that was part of my life as a hit man.

(upbeat music)

Hey, I'm John Alite, an ex-enforcer

for the Gambino family, hit man,

and I'm here to play, Never have I ever.

Never have I ever killed someone.

I have,

in the past.

You can't take back what you did.

You can only move forward, but that was part of my life

as a hit man enforcer for the Gambino family,

and some of the things I did for the Gambino family,

I killed with a bat.

I killed with a knife, I killed with a gun.

It was part of the life for me to enforce

some of our rules and laws when I was sent by guys

that I worked for personally.

Never have I ever nearly been killed.

I have.

Unfortunately I was stabbed up

a couple of different occasions and shot.

I was hit by a truck.

I was also baseball batted and piped,

and on several occasions, different organizations

tried to machine gun me on the corner of my house.

Another time, guys involved with the mafia

tried to shoot me down the block from my house.

One occasion, I was in the hospital for about six weeks.

I got out of the hospital and was probably about 80 pounds.

That was just part of my everyday life, unfortunately.

Never have I ever refused to kill someone.

I have.

At the time John Gotti Sr. was in MCC Manhattan.

He asked his bro Richard Gotti to come back

and see me at the club after the jailhouse visit

and asked me to kill a guy as a favor.

I believe he was part of, or one of the guys

that killed my friend, Greg Ryder.

That body was never found and he was supposedly

chopped up and disappeared.

I refused to do any kind of favor for him

to help him beat his case

while he was in jail for several murders.

During my enforcing days, I was also accused

of killing a rabbi who hired two people

in Jersey to murder his wife while he had an affair.

It was big news in Philadelphia, in South Jersey.

I was questioned, accused of that murder.

Later on, I was cleared.

They found the two guys that did it.

They told on each other, the rabbi went to prison for life.

The detectives at the time, when they came to see me,

you guys know what I do for a living?

You think I'm a hit man, but I wouldn't kill a woman.

I'm the guy that would go after the guy that killed a woman.

I would kill that person.

So I think afterwards my reputation talked for itself.

They knew I wouldn't do things like that,

and I never got accused of something like that again.

My hits were involved only with street guys, mob guys,

nothing outside of that.

Never have I ever been to prison.

Unfortunately, I've been to prison my whole life.

I've been off parole, the last couple of years

was the first time since I'm 17 I've been off parole.

I've been in prison in Florida, in New Jersey,

on a cruise ship, in Brazil, probably 40 prisons.

I did a book called Prison Rules with Nick Christopher.

It's a handbook actually about the pitfalls of the street

and how to avoid them, how to avoid trouble inside prison

if unfortunately you find yourself there.

When I went to jail in Brazil,

it was nothing like a United States prison

because it's almost like concentration camp,

like in the prisons I was in, you'd get about

a hundred something guys that get killed a year.

There's guns inside the prisons, there's machetes,

and there's occasions where I myself

had to stab several guys in prison in Brazil,

but it was more of a torture situation,

not here where you're housed and confined.

There, you're tortured, you'd be

in a completely different situation in third world country.

I think when you grow up in a life I grew up,

fortunately for me, my father trained me as a kid

to accept getting hurt.

As bad as they are, you have the mentality to never quit.

You're going to survive it somehow.

You're going to get out of it.

You're going to try to escape

and you have that no quit attitude.

It was a life where I hurt and killed a lot of people.

It's the part that took me to another level

that most guys don't go to.

Even though they talk, they'll do this, they'll do that.

Like most mob guys, if you go through the counts

and see how many people they actually hurt, shot, stabbed,

very few of them have done that kind of work.

It's only a handful of guys like myself

that do that kind of work.

Never have I ever suffered PTSD.

I have.

I think anybody that's been in wars

or seen the violence I saw, it's impossible

not to suffer from PTSD unless you're a sociopath.

The toll of people I hurt, killed, butchered,

I think took a toll on me mentally, and I started

seeing therapist probably for about 30 years, same woman,

somebody I relied on to help me not lose my temper

when people were pushing my buttons and at times I yell,

I scream, but I don't react the way I used to.

It's okay to think the same way.

Just don't react the same way.

My lifelong dream is to continue helping every kid

not to stay in prison, to get out and live a good life.

Never have I ever regretted killing someone.

I have not,

and the reason why I say I have not,

and I think that's going to surprise a lot of people

because if I didn't come to this point in my life,

I don't think I could have ever save

all the kids' lives I'm saving now.

So I think for whatever God's plan was for me,

it was for me to get to this point, the lowest point

you could probably get into your life

and reflect back on the lives that you took,

the people that get hurt, but in the long run,

I think I'm gonna save more lives

by doing the things like I'm doing now,

the Johnny and Jean podcast show

and all the talks and the second chance program

for teenagers and young adults.

I think, you know, some of the rewarding stories

that people ask me.

There's a young boy became Muay Thai fighter champion.

His name's Sam Greenfield.

I've mentioned him plenty of times

on different podcasts and shows I've done.

He had a friend that was killed in gang violence in the U.K.

So I flew over to the U.K. and Sam's father

got in touch with me.

We started speaking and I started talking to his son

and his son turned around his life

instead of trying to get revenge

and kill the guys that killed his friend.

He changed his life, he started helping kids advocate.

The kid's became a champion fighter

and he just received a award this year

for advocating for young adults.

So it's something I'm really proud of.

I changed the guy's life, I'm saving a lot of guys' lives.

It really makes a successful one.

It helps me to move forward, doing what I'm doing.

I can't look back and regret it

because I can't take it back, and it's something

that'll just frustrate me mentally, and I think

the only thing I could do was use what I did

in such a bad past to make such a good future.

(intriguing music)