Read Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family Online
Authors: Phil Leonetti,Scott Burnstein,Christopher Graziano
Tags: #Mafia, #Nonfiction, #Retail, #True Crime
But within weeks of the not guilty verdict, Little Nicky was back to his murderous ways.
Sindone was one of the guys who was involved in the plot to kill Ange, and him and my uncle hated each other. My uncle told Phil Testa that Sindone was a snake and that he couldn’t be trusted. Phil Testa agreed.
So we set him up and Salvie took him to a house in South Philadelphia where Frank Monte was waiting inside to see him. When Sindone was shaking hands with Frank Monte, Chuckie Merlino shot him in the head and killed him. Chuckie hit him three times in the back of the head, and they dumped him in an alley behind a store in South Philadelphia.
Phil Testa immediately sent word out that Sindone’s entire operation was to be split between his killers: Salvie Testa, Chuckie Merlino, and Frank Monte. Sindone’s top lieutenant, Joseph “Chickie” Ciancaglini, who was now aligned with Testa and Scarfo, would also receive a piece of the action and would oversee what remained of Sindone’s crew.
The year was almost over, but Little Nicky’s killing spree wasn’t.
John McCullough was the head of the roofers union in Philadelphia. He was a big Irish guy from Northeast Philadelphia and
he had been very close to Ange. He was the guy Ange wanted to let organize the unions in Atlantic City instead of my uncle.
Now my uncle hated John McCullough. When I say hated, I mean he absolutely detested him. He used to call him “that big Irish cocksucker,” or “the crew cut”—things like that.
Now when Ange was alive, John McCullough was untouchable because he was with Ange. But with Ange gone, John McCullough was vulnerable.
My uncle starts telling Phil Testa, “We gotta kill this guy, McCullough. He’s interfering in the unions in Atlantic City and he’s costing me money.” So Phil Testa gives my uncle the okay.
When McCullough lost his bid to take over the unions through Ange, he started causing trouble in Local 54. He was trying to break the union and it was costing us a lot of money.
My uncle went to Raymond “Long John” Martorano, who was a member of our family and who was close to McCullough and told him, “I want you to help us kill this guy. He’s no good.” Long John says, “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Nick.”
This was a way to test a guy’s loyalty, and at the same time eliminate a rival and show the guy that you were the power, that you were the muscle.
This is how my uncle was. He wanted to kill everybody. Everyone was petrified of my uncle, because with him it was kill, kill, kill. He didn’t give a fuck. There was no talking.
Even though Phil Testa was the boss, no one in our family was more powerful than my uncle. When the guys from New York wanted to discuss business with our family, they came and saw my uncle.
When it was time to whack somebody out, it was my uncle who was calling the shots. He would determine who was going to die and who was going to kill them.
So my uncle tells Long John, “I want you to use Al Daidone on this thing.”
Now Al Daidone was part of the bartenders union out of Camden—the one with Ralph Natale—which was the other union that Ange was pushing to get into Atlantic City. My uncle figures this is a way of testing Al Daidone’s loyalty as well, since at one time that union was opposed to my uncle.
He tells Long John that he will make Al Daidone a business agent for Local 54 if he helps out with the killing, and if he doesn’t, that he will kill him instead.
As crazy as my uncle was, I guess you can say there was a method to his madness.
On Tuesday, December 16, 1980, a delivery van pulled up outside the home of Philadelphia roofers union boss John McCullough in the Bustleton section of North Philadelphia. The deliveryman was carrying poinsettias, the bright red flowers that are synonymous with Christmas, which was only nine days away.
McCullough’s wife answered the door and let the deliveryman inside the home, and he placed two plants on the kitchen table. Standing a few feet away talking on a telephone that was attached to the wall was John McCullough.
McCullough nodded to the deliveryman, and the deliveryman nodded back. The deliveryman told Mrs. McCullough that he had one more plant in the truck and that he would be right back.
John McCullough saw that his wife had two dollars in her hand to tip the man upon his return and put his hand over the phone and said, “It’s Christmas time, give him three.”
When the deliveryman reappeared he was carrying the third poinsettia and placed it on the table with the others. Without hesitation he pulled out a .22 caliber handgun and fired six times into the head and neck of John McCullough at close range.
The union boss slid to the floor as a pool of blood surrounded him.
McCullough’s wife screamed in horror as the gunman very calmly left the house, got back into his van, and drove away.
John McCullough would no longer pose a threat to Nicky Scarfo’s control over the unions in Atlantic City. He was dead.
The night they killed McCullough, it was all over the news, the top story. My uncle was very happy until he learned that Long John didn’t kill McCullough himself; he had used a civilian, some kid named Willard Moran.
As for Al Daidone, he always maintained he had nothing to do with the hit.
My uncle went nuts. “This motherfucker used a civilian? Some fuckin’ Irish kid? Jesus Christ!”
Now my uncle wants to kill Long John for using this Moran kid to do the hit, but Phil Testa calms him down.
He says, “Nick, if we keep killing everybody, there won’t be anyone left.”
That year alone Angelo Bruno, Antonio “Tony Bananas” Caponigro, Alfred “Freddie” Salerno, John “Johnny Keys” Simone, Frank “the Barracuda” Sindone, and John McCullough had all been murdered as part of a mob power struggle.
And that’s how 1980, the bloodiest year in the history of the Philadelphia mob, ended.
Early in 1981, we learned that the US attorney’s office in Camden was going to indict my uncle for illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
The case stemmed from a search warrant that was executed when they came to arrest us for the Falcone murder. They found a small .22 in one of my uncle’s bedroom drawers.
We knew it was coming and we expected my uncle to do some time.
Now, at this time, I was starting to get more involved in some of the other unions in Atlantic City. We controlled all of them.
My uncle started giving me more responsibility now that I was made and with the fact that he was likely going to prison at some point on the gun case.
At this time I started to make some inroads with a local politician named Mike Matthews who wanted to become the mayor of Atlantic City. I had sent word to him that when the time was right that he and I would meet and we would discuss ways that we could help him get elected.
I also helped make a guy we knew named Joe Pasquale, the chief of police in Atlantic City.
We had the kind of power at that time where we could start a citywide strike with a single phone call and literally shut down the casinos. We also had the kind of power that if people didn’t do what we told them to do, we’d kill them and everyone knew that.
That was one of the reasons my uncle was so big on the killings. When people knew that we are involved, all the games stopped because they knew that we weren’t fucking around.
Around this time I got word that the president of one of the casinos wasn’t going to sign a union contract with Local 54. I sent word to the president of the casino that if he didn’t sign the contract that I personally would blow his brains out of his head.
He signed the contract the next day.
With Little Nicky slowing down slightly in anticipation of a federal prison term on the gun case, his nephew Philip “Crazy Phil” Leonetti was stepping in and running the day-to-day operations in Atlantic City.
While Scarfo and Leonetti were transitioning their power to the Jersey Shore, Philip Testa was losing his on the streets of South Philadelphia.
Basically, Chickie Narducci was back to his old tricks. The same stuff he was doing with Ange—the plotting against Phil Testa—he now started doing with the underboss, Pete Casella.
Narducci tells Casella that if they whack out Phil Testa and Casella becomes the boss that he would give Casella $1 million so he could retire to Florida and he could name Chickie Narducci the boss.
This is how bad Chickie Narducci wanted to be the boss. He was willing to pay $1 million for it. Now Chickie had two tons of money—he had millions of dollars, but he didn’t have no real power and that’s what he wanted.
Now Pete Casella doesn’t have 30 cents to his name so when Narducci offers him the $1 million, he goes for it, and him and Narducci start the plot to kill Phil Testa.
After the McCullough hit, me and my uncle were pretty much staying in Atlantic City and focusing on our operation, on our business. Even though my uncle was consigliere, we weren’t going to Philadelphia a lot so we were kind of out of the loop with what
Narducci and Casella were up to.
Now, you gotta remember: since the day my uncle came home from Yardville, I was literally by his side every day. Morning, noon, and night. Where he went, I went. This is going on eight or nine years at this point. All these meetings, all these killings, all of this plotting. I had been charged with murder twice, we had just beaten the Falcone case. I was literally exhausted. Now during our trial my uncle tells me and Lawrence, “If we win this thing, I’m taking you guys to Florida.”
I gotta tell ya, I needed that trip and so did my uncle. In this life, it’s not 9 to 5, it’s 24-7, especially with my uncle. He never stopped.
So one day at the office my uncle tells me and Lawrence, “Let’s go down there for a few days and relax. We’ll get some sun, we’ll have a good time.”
This was the best news I’d heard in years, right up there with beating the Falcone case.
So we fly down to Miami and we are staying in a suite at the original Diplomat Hotel, which was in Hollywood, Florida. You shoulda seen this place; it was a five-star resort from top to bottom.
Me, my uncle, and Lawrence would sit at the pool and just relax, have a few drinks, and then we’d eat at the best restaurants in town. Even my uncle was relaxing. He said, “We need to get down here more often. This is the life.”
Now the night we get back to Philadelphia, Chuckie is waiting for us at the airport. He has a look on his face. My uncle says, “What’s the matter? What’s going on?” Chuckie says, “Phil Testa says he needs to see you right away and it can’t wait. I think it’s the beef between him and Chickie.” My uncle says, “Okay, let’s go,” and that was it, the vacation was over.
We head over to Phil Testa’s restaurant on Bank Street in Old City for a meeting and when we get there it’s Phil Testa, Frank Monte, and Salvie sitting in a back booth. It’s me, my uncle, Chuckie, and Lawrence and we sit down in the booth.
Phil Testa says, “Nick, thanks for coming, I wouldn’t have called you here if it wasn’t urgent.”My uncle says, “What’s going on?”
So Phil Testa starts off by saying, “I think Chickie’s making a move against me. I’ve been hearing things in the street, and on top of that, he came to see me last week and asked to borrow $50,000.”
Now before we killed Sindone, Phil Testa borrowed $50,000 from him. That’s how greedy these guys were. They’d borrow the money knowing the guy was gonna get killed, and then they wouldn’t have to pay the money back.
That was the move that these guys did.
Now everybody knows the last thing Chickie Narducci needs is another $50,000—the guy is a multimillionaire. So Phil Testa is convinced that Chickie is doing to him, what Phil Testa did to Sindone.
My uncle says, “We gotta kill him. We gotta get him before he gets you.”
Phil Testa seems relieved. He says, “Thanks, Nick, I knew I could count on you,” and he gives my uncle a kiss on the cheek.
My uncle says, “We’ll take a ride up tomorrow and figure this thing out. Don’t worry about nothin’,” and then we drove back to Atlantic City.
Our plan was to go back and see him the next day, but because of what happened a few hours later, that didn’t happen.