…the view from the railroad trestle where Mark Schawandtner was murdered in 1978. The murderer, Billy Isaacs, was put away by the testimony of mobster-turned-informant, Charlie Wilhelm.

(Click here for mp3’s of some recent stories from the show. And PODCASTERS, click here for a link to subscribe to The Signal’s weekly podcast.)

This week, we’re re-broadcasting a program that originally aired on January 26th, 2007, a story about one man’s journey into an underworld of organized crime, and his subsequent attempt to escape it…

At one time in his life, Charlie Wilhelm was a loan shark, a drug dealer, and a bookmaker. He raked in ten thousand dollars a week, cash. But when he was ordered to murder two friends, he took himself (and all of his information) to the FBI. Wilhelm turned informant, wearing a wire and later testifying against his former partners in crime, putting them behind bars for years to come.

We’ll meet Charlie Wilhelm, and we’ll hear his reflections on crime, loyalty, and redemption this week on The Signal.

(Here’s a link to the book Wised Up: A Mobster’s Gritty Tale of Murder and Revenge on the Mean Streets, co-authored by Charlie Wilhelm and former Sun reporter Joan Jacobson.)

…The Signal’s newest intern: Abby, age 10 months

(Click here for mp3’s of some recent stories from the show. And PODCASTERS, click here for a link to subscribe to The Signal’s weekly podcast.)

• Writer, reporter, and filmmaker Josh Slates is fresh off the plane from the Cannes Film Festival, and he joins us to share some stories from his annual pilgrimage and to review some of the features that made waves at this year’s international gathering of movie-makers.
• We’ll pay a visit to Phil Davis and Scott Kecken, two of the driving forces behind the CAmm Cage, an exciting new resource for local filmmakers at The Creative Alliance.
• And the public radio series Radio Lab has its WYPR debut today. We’ll get a sneak peek at what we’re in store for, when we meet Jad Abumrad, the mastermind behind this award-winning public radio series that explores the intersection of science and culture.

These are the films that Josh Slates reviews on this Friday’s episode of The Signal:

• My Blueberry Nights
• Sicko
• Paranoid Park
• Control
• Blind Mountain
• Import/Export
• Boarding Gate
• The Flight of the Red Balloon
• 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
• No Country For Old Men
• Transmorphers
• Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane