Read Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family Online
Authors: Phil Leonetti,Scott Burnstein,Christopher Graziano
Tags: #Mafia, #Nonfiction, #Retail, #True Crime
Scarfo’s refusal to side with the boss in his dispute with Phil Testa did not sit well with Bruno, but Scarfo’s decision was carefully measured.
You have to understand our family, the Philadelphia mob, controlled Philadelphia, Trenton, Atlantic City, North Jersey, and all points in between. Bruno was the boss of the family and Testa was the underboss, but they were both in South Philadelphia. My uncle was the boss of Atlantic City and Caponigro was the boss of North Jersey. My uncle and Caponigro were very much alike, in the sense that they were both killers, that they both had strong crews, and that they both had strong connections to New York.
I remember as Ange was driving away, my uncle told me, “I think Lefty’s got some trouble coming his way and when it does, he ain’t gonna know what the fuck hit him.” As he was walking away he said to me, “Always watch out around these siggys; we can’t trust ’em, they’re not like us. The only things on their brain are greed and treason.”
As 1979 was drawing to a close, Angelo Bruno had been the undisputed ruler of the Philadelphia mob for two decades. Nicknamed the Docile Don, Bruno was an underworld diplomat who preferred a conciliatory approach to dispute resolution, a sentiment not shared by his subordinates in Atlantic City, namely Philip Leonetti and Nicodemo Scarfo, and his consigliere, Antonio “Tony Bananas” Caponigro, based out of Newark.
In
La Cosa Nostra,
you’re either a racketeer or you’re a gangster. Ange was a racketeer; we were gangsters. My uncle started sensing things changing with him and Ange after he turned him down on the thing with Phil Testa. My uncle started called Ange, Lefty, because he started throwing curveballs at us. My uncle would come back from a meeting and say, “Lefty threw us another curve,” little stuff like that. I know that at the time Chickie Narducci was in Ange’s ear, talking subversive about Phil Testa. You see Chickie Narducci was an earner, a multimillionaire. But he wanted power; the money wasn’t enough for him. He wanted Ange to make him the underboss so that he could take over the family when Ange retired. It was just like my uncle said with the siggys; it was always greed and treason. They were treacherous people by their own nature, my uncle would say, “It’s in their fuckin’ blood.”
As if the growing rift between Bruno and his underboss, Philip Testa, wasn’t bad enough, Bruno began to have problems with Little Nicky Scarfo in Atlantic City, as Scarfo grew more powerful and ambitious.
When they announced that the casinos were coming to Atlantic City, my uncle went to Philadelphia and had a sit-down with Ange to put it on record that he wanted Frank Gerace to run Local 54, which was the main union that was organizing hotel and restaurant workers in Atlantic City. This was going to the biggest moneymaker yet, better than bookmaking and loan sharking. If we controlled the union, we controlled the union’s money, which meant we would have access to millions of dollars at any given time.
Frank Gerace was a bartender, and he was always around. His mother lived in one of the apartments on Georgia Avenue in our building. Now when my uncle went to Philly about the unions, no one else had gone on record about it, which means it should have directly gone to us, without any interference. You have to remember, by this time my uncle had been the only made guy in Atlantic City for more than ten years since Skinny Razor died, so he felt entitled to the unions, and he was right. They should have gone to us, no questions asked.
But what Ange did, he told my uncle, “Nick, let me think about it and I’ll get back to you.” Now this is what my uncle did to him on the Phil Testa thing and now Ange was kind of giving it back to him. I remember driving back to Atlantic City after the meeting and my uncle wasn’t happy, but we never discussed business in the car. When we got back to Atlantic City we went to Scannicchio’s for dinner. The owner, Vince Sausto, was a good friend of ours and he always took good care of us. Sometimes I’d go there for lunch and I’d end up eating lunch and dinner, staying for hours, talking and laughing with Vince. He was a great guy and a terrific friend. He was the absolute best. Vince was also an insurance agent and we had used his office to take the statement from the guy in the Pepe Leva case.
But on this night, following his meeting with Angelo Bruno regarding control of the unions in Atlantic City, Nicky Scarfo wasn’t in the mood for laughing and joking.
My uncle said, “If this cocksucker, Lefty, tries to throw us a curve with this union business, there’s going to be resistance and we ain’t backin’ down.”
Now in all the years that I had been around my uncle, I had never once heard him curse Angelo Bruno. This was the first time. His colors changed, he really went in on him. You have to remember, Ange was the boss and my uncle was all about
La Cosa Nostra,
the rules. The boss was the boss, and that’s it. You never questioned the boss, you never talked subversive about the boss. If you did, you’d be killed. Those were the rules and my uncle lived by those rules, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. That’s how committed he was to
La Cosa Nostra.
I remember saying, “Yeah, but what can we do, he’s the boss,” and my uncle’s response was “Not all of our friends are happy with Lefty.”
Nicky Scarfo knew from his conversations with Genovese power broker Bobby Manna that Bruno’s consigliere, Antonio “Tony Bananas” Caponigro, the family’s North Jersey boss, was starting to question the effectiveness of Bruno’s leadership.
Manna didn’t learn this from Caponigro himself, as Caponigro—aware of Manna’s close relationship with Scarfo—circumvented Manna and spoke directly to another powerful, old-school Genovese mobster named Frank “Funzi” Tieri he thought that he could trust.
Tieri relayed everything that Caponigro was telling him to both Manna and Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, the soon-to-be boss of the Genovese family. Tieri, Manna, and Gigante saw a major opportunity for the Genovese family when Caponigro started putting out feelers regarding a change in leadership should something unfortunate happen to Angelo Bruno.
Ange had aligned the Philly mob with the Gambinos. Ange had been very close to Carlo Gambino and when he died, Ange became close with his successor, Paul Castellano.
Philadelphia occupied a seat on the Commission and under Bruno Philadelphia was essentially a proxy vote for the Gambinos. If Bruno was eliminated and Caponigro succeeded him, Caponigro had assured Tieri that Philadelphia’s proxy vote would go to the Genovese, tipping the balance of power on the Commission in favor of the Genovese.
The problem for Caponigro was that Bobby Manna had solicited similar information from Nicky Scarfo regarding the underboss Philip Testa.
Bobby Manna asked us to come see him in Hoboken. It was me, my uncle, Chuckie, and Bobby. We went to Casella’s, a restaurant where Bobby did some of his business. While we were eating, Bobby asked my uncle, he said, “Nick, if God forbid something were to happen to Angelo and Phil Testa were to succeed him, I’d like to know where we would stand with your family.” My uncle responded to him in Italian and said,
“Una familia,”
which means, one family.
My uncle was basically telling him that should something happen to Ange and Phil Testa was named boss, that Philadelphia would align themselves with the Genovese. I remember Bobby saying, “My friends are going to be very happy to hear that.”
The friends Manna referred to were the other members of Vincent “The Chin” Gigante’s inner circle who were on the verge of assuming control of not only the Genovese crime family, but had their eye on a much bigger prize: control of the Commission, the governing body of
La Cosa Nostra.
My uncle said to him, “Tell this guy,” and he touched his chin, that’s how we referenced Gigante, “that we know who our friends are and that’s something we never forget.” Bobby nodded and smiled and patted my uncle on the hand.
The ambitious Genovese mobsters, led by Bobby Manna and his boss, Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, were now in a powerful position, having assurances from Bruno’s underboss and consigliere that should something happen to Bruno, Philadelphia would become their proxy vote.
Antonio Caponigro’s top lieutenant in the North Jersey faction of the Bruno mob was Ralph “Blackie” Napoli, the same Blackie Napoli who used to walk the track at Yardville State prison with Bobby Manna and Nicky Scarfo. Manna knew that should something unfortunate happen to Caponigro, that Blackie Napoli would take over North Jersey and that the Genovese could influence him and, in essence, insert themselves into a position of power over the Bruno family’s vast North Jersey operation, which included a thriving multimillion dollar gambling and loan-sharking business that the powerful Caponigro controlled with an iron fist.
This Machiavellian plot of treachery made both Angelo Bruno and Antonio Caponigro expendable to forward-thinking mafiosi like Funzi Tieri, Bobby Manna, and his boss Vincent “The Chin” Gigante. To them, the Brunos, the Caponigros, and the Napolis were pieces on one big
La Cosa Nostra
chessboard.
Now around this time Ange gets back to my uncle on what he wants to do with the unions in Atlantic City and just like my uncle predicted he throws us a curveball. He tells us that he wants to put John McCullough, who is with the roofers union in Philadelphia, and Ralph Natale, who is in the bartenders union out of Camden, in place to organize the hotel, restaurant, and casino workers in Atlantic City, ultimately shutting my uncle out. Chickie Narducci was very close with McCullough and this was another example of what he and Ange were up to. Their greed knew no end. Typical siggy shit. Now what they don’t know is that it’s easy to control a local, but if you want real power with a union, you have to control or have influence over the national. And when my uncle talked to Ange about the unions in Atlantic City, what he didn’t tell him was that he had also talked to Bobby Manna because the Chin and the Genovese family were calling the shots. So there was absolutely no way for my uncle to lose, but Ange and Narducci didn’t know this. Ange thought if he put his local in there that was it. But the Genovese were backing my uncle.
By the end of 1979, Angelo Bruno had no idea what was happening around him. While he and Chickie Narducci were trying to box out Phil Testa in South Philadelphia and now Nicky Scarfo in Atlantic City, he had no clue what was in store for him in 1980.
A
S 1980 APPROACHED THINGS IN AND AROUND ATLANTIC CITY WERE STARTING TO HEAT UP FOR NICKY SCARFO AND HIS GANG.
After we killed Judge Helfant, there was a lot of heat on us in Atlantic City. Our names and pictures started appearing in the newspaper and everyone knew who we were. My uncle couldn’t have been happier. He loved the publicity. There was this local radio talk show host named Mike Sherman who started calling me Crazy Phil. I hated the nickname, but my uncle said, “Are you kidding? Guys would pay money for a name like that.”
Around this time Philip Leonetti’s partnership with Vince Bancheri ended, and he and his uncle formed their own concrete company and named it Scarf, Inc.
Our office was on the ground floor of our building at 28 North Georgia Avenue in Atlantic City. My cousin Chris, who was my uncle’s oldest son, came to work for Scarf, Inc. He was totally legit and never involved in anything connected to
La Cosa Nostra.
Him and my uncle would constantly argue about everything. They fought like cats and dogs.
Despite all of the heat on Nicky Scarfo and Philip Leonetti, Scarf, Inc. was able to secure site work on four casino projects that were being built in Atlantic City, including the short-lived Playboy Casino and what would eventually become Harrah’s in the Marina District.
And Little Nicky and his nephew Crazy Phil weren’t the only gangsters moonlighting as contractors. The Merlino brothers, trusted members of Scarfo’s inner-circle formed a rebar company called Nat Nat and they too were doing site work on several casino projects.
Chuckie and Lawrence started Nat Nat right around this time and they worked out of the same office we used for Scarf, Inc. Every
day it was the same crew hanging around Georgia Avenue waiting to speak to my uncle, or waiting to speak to me so that I would speak to my uncle for them. It would be me and Lawrence, the Blade, Saul Kane, my cousins Chris and Nicky Jr., and a couple of other guys. If Chuckie was down from Philly he’d be there, usually with his son Little Joey and Phil Testa’s son Salvie. I always got along with Chuckie, but I never liked his son. He was a fresh kid and I always thought he was no good. Him and Nicky Jr. were the same age and they used to hang together with Lawrence’s kids. Me and Salvie were very close. I had known him my whole life. What my uncle was doing with me, teaching me about
La Cosa Nostra,
Salvie’s dad was doing with him.
This included learning not only the rules, but learning how to become a killer as well.
Right after we killed Judge Helfant, my uncle went to Phil Testa and Angelo Bruno and told them he wanted to kill a guy in South Philadelphia named Mickey Coco who had sold drugs to the son of Frank Monte, who was a made guy and had been close with my uncle since they were kids. Drugs were against the rules and my uncle detested drug dealers.
That ruffled a lot of feathers with the old-timers that my uncle would come up to South Philadelphia and tell the boss and the underboss that they needed to kill a guy in their own backyard, in South Philadelphia. We were killing all of these guys in Atlantic City and everyone in the mob knew it. They knew we weren’t playing around, that we were gangsters. But on the Mickey Coco hit, my uncle was basically telling Ange and Phil Testa, “This guy’s selling drugs to the son of a member of this family. He’s breaking the rules of
La Cosa Nostra;
he’s gotta go. He needs to be killed and you guys shouldn’t need me to come up from Atlantic City, 60 miles away and tell you when it’s time do a killing.” What he was saying, basically, was that this is how gangsters act: pay attention.