{"id":111593,"date":"2026-10-22T16:00:59","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T16:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/?p=111593"},"modified":"2026-10-22T16:01:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T16:01:00","slug":"former-risp-detective-brian-andrews-mob-associate-tony-fiore-to-deliver-oct-23-uri-forensic-series-lecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2026\/10\/former-risp-detective-brian-andrews-mob-associate-tony-fiore-to-deliver-oct-23-uri-forensic-series-lecture\/","title":{"rendered":"Former RISP detective Brian Andrews, mob associate Tony Fiore to deliver Oct. 23 URI Forensic Series lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 22, 2026 \u2013 Brian Andrews, who led the Rhode Island State Police detective division during the height of New England\u2019s drug and mob wars in the 1970s and 1980s, will speak at the University of Rhode Island on <strong>Friday, Oct. 23<\/strong>, as part of the University\u2019s ongoing fall Forensic Science Partnership lecture series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Andrews will be joined by Anthony \u201cTony\u201d Fiore, a former New England mafia associate who specialized in high-stakes heists\u2014and who Andrews regularly investigated. Their talk, titled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/chemistry\/seminars\/\">Cat and Mouse<\/a>,\u201d will take place from 3:30-5 p.m. in Room 100 of the Richard E. Beaupre Center for Chemical and Forensic Sciences, 140 Flagg Road, on the Kingston Campus.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The lecture series welcomes many speakers representing specialized areas of forensic science who present their real-life experiences within their fields. The seminars are offered for credit but also open to the public at no cost. Those who cannot attend in person may view Andrews\u2019 and Fiore\u2019s lecture <a href=\"https:\/\/uri.hosted.panopto.com\/Panopto\/Pages\/Viewer.aspx?id=e851ddb6-e56d-45db-9df5-b4da012e103d\">live online.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In his time with the Rhode Island State Police, Andrews helped investigate organized crime associates in Rhode Island, including Fiore, Ralph DeMasi and Gerald Ouimette, and others who were involved with burglaries of precious metals worth millions of dollars. Andrews\u2019 investigations included the first ground-breaking wiretaps that eventually exposed the mob\u2019s burglary ring. Andrews also served as a member of the narcotics and intelligence divisions with the Rhode Island State Police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fiore associated himself with the New England mafia in both Providence and North Providence during the 1970s as a master thief, burglar and hijacker of armored cars and trucks. He served a 17-year sentence in federal prison for an armored truck heist. Andrews and Fiore have also shared their noted history on an episode of Gimlet Media\u2019s \u201cCrimetown\u201d podcast series, which looks at how organized crime was shaped in various U.S. cities, including Providence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Andrews\u2019 and Fiores\u2019 lecture will be followed by a talk on Oct. 30 by Sujit Purushothaman, senior lead research engineer for global insurer FM, about forensic investigations. A Dec. 11 talk by Chicago-based attorney Gil Sapir on forensic science and expert witness testimony will conclude the series\u2019 fall schedule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>A full schedule and past recorded lectures can be found on the URI Forensic Science Partnership\u2019s website. To be added to the Forensic Science Seminar Series\u2019 email list, contact james.bessette@uri.edu.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 22, 2026 \u2013 Brian Andrews, who led the Rhode Island State Police detective division during the height of New England\u2019s drug and mob wars in the 1970s and 1980s, will speak at the University of Rhode Island on Friday, Oct. 23, as part of the University\u2019s ongoing fall Forensic Science Partnership [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":111594,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12,1913,1912],"class_list":["post-111593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-public-engagement","tag-special-events"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111595,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111593\/revisions\/111595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}