Read Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family Online
Authors: Phil Leonetti,Scott Burnstein,Christopher Graziano
Tags: #Mafia, #Nonfiction, #Retail, #True Crime
Reports of Scarfo’s moxie regarding ordering the hit on Mickey Coco began to circulate in neighborhood bars and social clubs in South Philadelphia, Newark, and on Mulberry Street in New York’s Little Italy, just like it had after Scarfo whacked out crooked Judge Eddie Helfant.
There was no doubt about it: Angelo Bruno was a racketeer; Nicky Scarfo was the gangster.
Following Scarfo’s lead, the plan to execute Michael “Mickey Coco” Cifelli began to take form and would manifest itself on a cold day in January when Salvatore “Chuckie” Merlino and Salvatore “Salvie” Testa, both wearing ski masks and carrying handguns, entered a neighborhood bar at the corner of Tenth and Wolf in South Philadelphia and shot Cifelli at point-blank range as he sat at the bar, sipping a beer and waiting to meet with Bobby Lumio, a Scarfo associate who was conveniently talking on a pay phone when the masked gunmen entered the bar.
My uncle wanted Chuckie to be one of the shooters because he had proposed him for membership into
La Cosa Nostra,
and in order to be made, you had to be 100-percent Italian and you had to have participated in a murder.
Philip Testa wanted Salvie to be the other shooter because, like my uncle was doing with Chuckie, Phil Testa was proposing Salvie for membership. My uncle had also proposed Bobby Lumio for membership for his role in setting Mickey Coco up.
As Nicky Scarfo became more of a force in
La Cosa Nostra,
he started to distance himself from members of his Atlantic City crew that he thought were dead weight.
Two men who fit that description were Alfredo Ferraro and Vincent Falcone, both of whom had been trusted members of Nicky Scarfo’s gang since the early ’70s.
My uncle decided he didn’t want either of them around us anymore. He would say things like, “These two guys are useless,” or “These two guys are holding us back.” He grew to detest both of them.
What happened next is vintage Nicky Scarfo.
Now Alfredo and Vince were the best of friends. They were Italian, but they came to the United States from Argentina and they came over together.
They were very close these two. So my uncle decided that he wanted to kill Alfredo and he wanted Vince to be the shooter. Now
if Vince doesn’t kill Alfredo, my uncle will have him killed and then we’d kill Alfredo anyway. It’s like killing two birds with one stone. So my uncle gives Vince the order to kill Alfredo and right away Vince is dogging it, making up excuses. Alfredo must have started getting vibes and he just disappears, he stops coming into Atlantic City. We stopped seeing him. But one night Vince is out drinking with Alfredo, and Chuckie and Lawrence bump into them, and they both get drunk and they tell Chuckie and Lawrence that my uncle is crazy and that we shouldn’t be in the concrete business.
A few days later, my uncle and Chuckie end up going on vacation together to Italy and while they are there, Chuckie tells my uncle what Vince and Alfredo had said about us. My uncle told Chuckie, “When we get back I’m gonna whack ’em both.”
And so begins the plan to kill Vincent Falcone.
My uncle never really liked Vince; he didn’t think he was cut out for
La Cosa Nostra.
My uncle would say about Vince and Alfredo, “They are not meant for
this thing,”
meaning
La Cosa Nostra,
this thing of ours. Now Alfredo had stopped coming around. He even stopped doing business in Atlantic City with his concrete company. And even though my uncle wanted to kill him, it wasn’t a top priority at the time. But now with Vince Falcone not following orders and then talking subversive to Chuckie and Lawrence about me and my uncle, my uncle became obsessed with killing him. He used to call Vince, “the Big Shot” when he spoke about killing him. He’d say things like, “We’re gonna show the Big Shot who’s in charge,” and things like that. Vince had been around long enough to know how my uncle was and I think he knew that we were going to kill him, so like Alfredo did, Vince stopped coming around.
Now at the time, Vince was married, but he was seeing a young girl who lived on Georgia Avenue right across the street from us. The girl’s name was Maria, and she and her family had moved from South Philadelphia to Ducktown, just like we had. She was a beautiful young Italian girl with dark hair and a pretty face.
Now when Vince would pick her up or drop her off, he would never drive down Georgia Avenue because he knew we wanted to kill him.
I used to tell her that Vince was no good and that she should stop seeing him, but she was young and she didn’t listen to me. There was something special about that girl, even back then I felt it.
But not every murder had to take place right away. Some were business, like the Louie DeMarco and Pepe Leva murders, and some were more personal like the Judge Helfant killing. To Nicky Scarfo, killing the Big Shot, Vincent Falcone, had become personal and just like he did with Judge Helfant, Scarfo set out to lull Falcone into a comfort zone and then kill him when he least expected it.
Now around this time a position opens up in the concrete union and my uncle puts the word out that he wants Vince Falcone to get it. This was a big deal and something that Vince had always wanted. So my uncle sets the trap and Vince goes for it. My uncle is acting like everything is fine, and now Vince starts coming around Georgia Avenue again. We are playing along like nothing ever happened. Me, Chuckie, Lawrence, the Blade—and Vince is doing the same because he really wants to be the boss of the concrete union. Now at this time Alfredo isn’t around anymore, and Vince is hanging with a kid from South Philadelphia named Joe Salerno, who was a plumber.
Joe Salerno had borrowed $10,000 from me and my uncle and was paying us two and half points (or $250 per week) in interest on top of the $10,000 he owed us. It was a standard juice loan and at the time we were doing a lot of loan sharking. Every week I’d go out and pick up envelopes or guys would come to the office. Everybody paid because they knew our reputation. These types of loans were our bread and butter.
With the holidays approaching and the promise of a new job waiting for him in the New Year, Vincent Falcone thought he had a lot to look forward to.
He thought wrong.
My uncle organized a little party at a house in Margate nine days before Christmas. He was already there waiting for us to arrive. Lawrence had a Thunderbird at the time and he was driving.
I was sitting in the passenger’s seat, and Vincent Falcone and Joe Salerno were in the backseat. It took us about ten minutes to drive from the office on Georgia Avenue to the house in Margate, which was right on the beach. Now my uncle is in the living room of the apartment on the second floor, and to get up there you had to climb a set of wooden steps that were adjacent to the outside of the house. The house was a two-story duplex. It was cold and windy and starting to get dark and you could hear the wind coming off of the ocean. Looking back on it, it was kind of eerie. I was wearing a black leather jacket and it was zipped all the way up and I had a .32 revolver tucked into my waistband. Lawrence and Joe Salerno were ahead of us and talking as they went up the steps. Joe Salerno had no idea what was going to happen, but Lawrence did. Now Vince is a few feet in front of me and I am behind him as we are going up the steps but he’s kind of hesitating, like he’s uncertain of what’s going on.
He said, “Where’s everybody at? I thought Chuckie was coming down.” I put my hand on his back and said, “He’ll be here; let’s go inside and have some drinks,” and kind of ushered him up the steps. His antenna was definitely up but I had positioned myself behind him so that if he decided not to go up the steps or if he tried to get away somehow, I would have blasted him right there.
When the four men reached the top of the steps, they walked into the apartment, where Little Nicky Scarfo was seated on a couch watching a football game waiting for them.
Little Nicky didn’t just want Vincent Falcone to be killed; he wanted to be present when it took place.
This wasn’t business; it was personal.
While most powerful mob leaders would seek to insulate themselves from the murders they order, Scarfo wanted to bask in them and personally savior the experience in any way he could.
The Falcone killing also provided Scarfo with the opportunity to commit a murder alongside his nephew, to literally bind the two men together in what was becoming Scarfo’s never ending bloodlust.
To Little Nicky, the entire universe seemed to revolve around three things: the mob, murder, and family, specifically in that order. The killing of Vincent Falcone in the manner he foresaw, gave him the chance to
combine all three of these at the same time in one giant orgy of death, lineage, and
La Cosa Nostra.
When we walked in, Vince kind of froze and I continued to usher him inside and to break the little bit of tension that was in the room, I said, “Come on, Vince, let’s make some drinks.” My uncle, who was still in the living room watching TV, said, “Hey, Vince, bring me a Cutty and some water.”
Now, at the time, Lawrence was in the dining room area talking with Joe Salerno, kind of distracting him. That was all happening within seconds of us walking into the apartment. So we grabbed the bottle of scotch for my uncle and put it on the kitchen table, and then I said, “Vince, get some ice.” When Vince started to walk away towards the refrigerator to get the ice, I reached into my jacket and took the gun from my waistband and I walked right behind him and blasted him right behind his right ear. As soon as I shoot him, his body propelled forward just like what happened to Louie DeMarco, and then he crashed into the refrigerator and crumbled to the floor.
All the sudden, Joe Salerno starts going nuts. He says to my uncle, “Nick, I didn’t do nothing,” and then to me, “Philip, I didn’t do nothing.” He’s like hyperventilating. My uncle watched the whole thing, he was watching as I shot him. Now he gets up from the couch and comes in and tries to calm Joe Salerno down. He says, “I know you didn’t do nothing, Joe. Relax, everything is gonna be okay.”
Now Lawrence was standing two feet away from me when I hit him and somehow his eyebrow caught on fire—it got singed from the flame of the gun. So my uncle is trying to calm down Joe Salerno, Vince is on the ground bleeding, and Lawrence starts complaining about his eyebrow being on fire. So I say, “Jesus Christ Lawrence, you knew I was gonna shoot him. Why the fuck were you standing so close to him?”
With all of this going on my uncle manages to calm down Joe Salerno.
My uncle comes over to where Vince is lying and kneels down next to him and says, “He’s still breathing, give him another one right here,” and he moves Vince’s jacket a bit and points to his heart. So Vince is lying there and there is a pool of blood forming
underneath of him and he is like gurgling, trying to breath and I stood over him and raised the gun and shot him one more time in the chest. The impact of the second shot caused his body to jerk and then that was it, he was dead.
At this point my uncle was ecstatic. He jumped to his feet and said, “The big shot is dead, look at him,” and he kind of mocked him by gesturing to the body and called him a “piece of shit cocksucker.” He was actually cursing at the corpse. Now I have the gun in my hand and I turn to Joe Salerno, who is standing right there and I look him dead in the eye and I said, “He was a no good motherfucker. I wish I could bring him to life so I could him kill again.” I was prepared to kill Joe Salerno, too. I didn’t give a fuck; I woulda shot him right there on the spot without any hesitation, but he stopped carrying on.
Scarfo then resumed his role as coach and articulated precisely what would happen next; he didn’t miss a beat.
He said to Lawrence, “You drive Philip back to the office and bring back Vince’s car. Me and Joe will stay here and clean up.” Now Lawrence drives me back to Georgia Avenue and I take all of my clothes off, put them in a bag, and I get right into the shower. I’m scrubbing under my nails, the whole bit. Just like I had done after the DeMarco hit. Now I’m dressed and I go downstairs to the office and Chuckie and the Blade were there. We were all waiting for my uncle to get back.
Now I see someone walk by the window and I recognize that it’s Maria from across the street. So I go outside to see what she wants, and she tells me that she noticed that Vince’s car had been moved and did I know where he was. Now what was I going to tell her: yeah, he’s in the trunk of his car. I can’t say nothing, so I said, “I don’t know where Vince is.” After she leaves I go back in the office with Chuckie and the Blade, and while we are waiting for my uncle to get back I call up a friend of mine named Joe Disco who was a DJ at a local radio station. He picks up and he says, “Hey, Philip, do you want to hear a song?” So I tell him, “Yeah, Joe, play that song, ‘Do or Die,’” and he plays it. Now Joe Disco was related to Sam Scafidi, who was a captain under Angelo Bruno based out of Vineland, New
Jersey. Sam Scafidi was one of the guys who helped my uncle when they killed Reds Caruso. I’m thinking if I ever get charged, I can bring Joe Disco in as a witness and he would testify that I had called the radio station. Joe Disco never knew the real reason I called.