Read Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family Online
Authors: Phil Leonetti,Scott Burnstein,Christopher Graziano
Tags: #Mafia, #Nonfiction, #Retail, #True Crime
As Philip Leonetti and Benny Eggs Mangano played cards, Nicodemo Scarfo and Pete Casella were taken to the Triangle Social Club, which was only three blocks away.
The windows on the nondescript storefront were completely blacked out, and inside there were two chairs, one for Scarfo and one for Casella.
Sitting across from the two Philadelphia mobsters behind a table were the three Genovese leaders. Gigante was seated in the middle in his trademark bathrobe; the stone-faced Manna was to his left, and the dour-looking Salerno to his right, wearing his trademark fedora and puffing on a cigar that remained firmly between his teeth.
According to Scarfo, who later told Leonetti what happened inside the meeting, Gigante wasted no time with pleasantries and started the meeting by speaking directly to Casella in his rapid-fire New York cadence.
“Listen, we know what happened. Don’t lie to us. If you lie to us, we can’t help you. Tell us the names of everyone who was involved in this plot.”
Scarfo told Leonetti that Casella answered the question directly.
“It was me. It was my idea. Me, Chickie Narducci, and Rocco Marinucci, and a kid Rocco knows.”
Scarfo said Fat Tony took the cigar out of his mouth and barked, “This motherless fuck, the kid, does he have a name?” and Casella responded, “I don’t know his name,” and then hung his head in shame.
Gigante smacked the table, and Casella looked up at him, and then the don spoke, “You’re finished. You are to retire immediately to Florida. You are forbidden from ever returning to Philadelphia. When you leave here, you get on a plane and you go. If you breathe a word of this to anyone, we will kill you, your brother, and your brother-in-law. Do you understand?”
Casella nodded his head and Gigante gestured for one of the Genovese soldiers to escort him out of the club. As Casella attempted to shake Gigante’s hand, Gigante stared at him with disgust and spit on the floor in
his direction, and Casella was whisked away.
With Casella gone, it was just Little Nicky and the three Genovese leaders. Again, Gigante got right to the point.
“Well, Nick, I don’t see no one else here, so I guess that makes you the new boss,” at which point Gigante stood and Scarfo approached the table and kissed Gigante on each cheek, as Manna and Salerno clapped their hands.
Scarfo would also kiss Manna and Salerno in a similar fashion.
Nicodemo Domenic Scarfo was now the undisputed boss of the Philadelphia–Atlantic City mob. He had just turned 52 years old and was strategically aligned with New York’s Genovese crime family and Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, the most powerful mob boss in the nationwide crime syndicate known as
La Cosa Nostra, this thing of ours.
The underworld in Philadelphia and Atlantic City would never be the same.
T
HAT NIGHT, WHEN SCARFO AND LEONETTI RETURNED TO GEORGIA AVENUE, THERE WAS A SMALL CONTINGENCY WAITING FOR THEM.
It was Chuckie, Lawrence, Salvie, and Frank Monte. I introduced my uncle to them as their new boss, and everyone was hugging each other and kissing each other on the cheek.
The five of us went down to Angeloni’s for drinks to celebrate. My uncle told us, “We gotta let things settle a bit before we start making changes. We gotta do it right. One step at a time. This is a whole new ballgame.”
Everyone was happy, but it seemed like Salvie was a little out of it. I think he was expecting my uncle to say our first order of business is we’re gonna go kill this one or we’re gonna go kill that
one—the guys who had killed his father. But my uncle was saying we’re gonna take things slow and let the smoke clear, which was definitely the right move for the organization.
Nicky Scarfo enjoyed a steady stream of visitors to his Atlantic City headquarters over the next few weeks, as members and associates of the Bruno crime family came to pledge their allegiance to the new boss.
Scarfo would also travel to Philadelphia and meet with the captains left over from the Bruno and Testa regimes to discuss the family’s new hierarchy.
Nicky Scarfo would name his close friend Salvatore “Chuckie” Merlino as his underboss and Testa loyalist Frank Monte to the post of consigliere.
Within a few short months, Scarfo would name four new
caporegimes
: Joseph “Chickie” Ciancaglini, Salvatore “Salvie” Testa, Lawrence “Yogi” Merlino, and his 28-year-old nephew, Philip “Crazy Phil” Leonetti.
Scarfo kept his old captain, Alfred “Freddie” Iezzi, on board, but the old-timer was already semiretired. Scarfo also kept Bruno-era captains Santo “Big Santo” Idone and Joseph “Joe” Scafidi in place, but “took down” John “Johnny” Cappello, the brother-in-law of the recently deposed Pete Casella.
Scarfo also kept the treacherous Frank “Chickie” Narducci in place for the time being, but Little Nicky had already decided that Narducci’s days were numbered for his involvement in the bombing death of Philip Testa.
Me, Chuckie, and Lawrence were the only ones who knew what Pete Casella had told the Chin about the plot to kill Phil Testa. My uncle was afraid if Salvie knew, or even Frank Monte, that they would kill Chickie Narducci immediately.
My uncle said, “We’re gonna kill him; we’re just not gonna kill him yet.”
As March turned into April, Little Nicky and his new regime were in full swing, and business was good and it was about to get a whole lot better.
One day, me and my uncle are having lunch with Saul Kane and Lawrence, and Saul says, “Nick, I got an idea for you—you should start a street tax. The way it works is you tax everybody who is doing anything illegal, and you offer them the protection and support
of your family in exchange for them paying the tax. I know it’s been done in Chicago and real big in New York in the ’30s and ’40s. I think you could make a lot of money doing it.”
My uncle’s eyes lit up. He knew that we had the muscle to enforce it. He made a face at me and I made a face back at him, and we both smiled.
From that moment on, the imposition and collection of the street tax became our No. 1 priority and one of our biggest moneymakers.
As Scarfo was setting out to restructure the organization, each made member had to formally come in and sit down with the boss and the underboss and talk about what they had going on.
Guys had to come in and report what they had going on, who was doing what, so that we could figure out what was out there and what we were going to collect, both as tribute and as the street tax.
A lot of guys hadn’t been paying Ange or Phil Testa the right amount in tribute for years, and some guys weren’t paying at all. My uncle told everybody that came in the same thing: “Those days are over. You and your people are gonna pay what you’re supposed to pay, or it’s this,” and he made the sign of the gun.
Scarfo had assembled a group of killers around him and everyone knew it. Despite that, there were those in the underworld who did not heed the new boss’s warning.
Men like Chelsais “Stevie” Bouras, the leader of Philadelphia’s Greek mob.
Bouras had blatantly balked at Scarfo’s demand that he be forced to pay the mob’s new street tax and Scarfo swiftly ordered his murder to send a message to anyone else considering not paying.
My uncle had Long John set it up because he was close to Bouras.
Raymond “Long John” Martorano, the onetime
aide de camp
to Angelo Bruno who had helped Scarfo murder union boss John McCullough in December 1980, set up a dinner party at a restaurant in Philadelphia and invited Bouras to join him and his wife and several other people for a night out.
Bouras brought his young girlfriend to the restaurant and everyone was having a good time until two men with ski masks entered the restaurant and motioned for Martorano and the others to move as they opened fire on Bouras, killing him with a barrage of bullets, and killing his young date who got caught in the cross fire.
The cold-blooded mob killing of Stevie Bouras sent the rest of the Philadelphia underworld scurrying to pay Scarfo’s street tax, and Scarfo’s crews were bringing in money, hand over fist.
Once we got it going good, we were bringing in $100,000 per month just in street tax money. Don’t forget we still had gambling, loan sharking, and extortion operations, so on a good month we could bring in a half a million or more in cash.
With Scarfo and Leonetti based in Atlantic City, Salvatore “Chuckie” Merlino and Salvie Testa were running the day-to-day operations of the family in South Philadelphia.
Things were great in the beginning, especially after we killed Stevie Bouras. Everyone was doing their job and we were making a lot of money. Everybody was paying. My uncle was happy and things were good.
But hanging over Scarfo’s head in the summer of 1981 was an imminent prison sentence stemming from his conviction on gun possession charges in connection with the .22 that was found in his bedroom drawer during the police raid following the Falcone killing.
As a convicted felon, Scarfo was facing several years in federal prison and was out on bail pending appeal. His lawyer, Bobby Simone, had told him that the appeal was a long shot, and that in all likelihood he would be in jail within the next twelve months.
The looming jail sentence did not stop Scarfo from ordering the murder of a South Philadelphia drug dealer and loan shark named Johnny Calabrese on October 6, 1981, because like Stevie Bouras, Johnny Calabrese balked at paying the Scarfo mob’s street tax.
We approached Chickie Ciancaglini, who was close with Calabrese, and he set it up. Two guys from his crew, Tommy DelGiorno
and Faffy Iannarella, were the shooters, and another guy named Pat Spirito was the getaway driver.
As Chick was walking Calabrese to his car, Tommy and Faffy came out of an alley and blasted him. He died in the street.
The Calabrese hit was the latest in a string of gangland murders that started with the Bruno killing less than 18 months before and garnered both a lot of publicity from the local media and a lot of extra scrutiny from law enforcement.
Three weeks after the Calabrese killing, Little Nicky turned his attention on an aging mob associate named Frank “Frankie Flowers” D’Alfonso.
Frankie Flowers wasn’t a made guy, he was an associate and he made a ton of money with Ange. They were involved in a lot of things together, both illegal and legal stuff. So when my uncle becomes boss, he sends for Flowers and the guy doesn’t come in. So my uncle tells Salvie, “I want you to give him a beating. Don’t kill him, but shake him up. Make sure he knows that it’s a new regime and he is going to pay like everyone else.”
Scarfo knew that D’Alfonso was a huge earner, and Scarfo hoped that a beating at the hands of Salvie Testa would bring the old-timer around.
Salvie and Gino Milano, who was one of Salvie’s guys, set up a meeting with Flowers and he falls for it and is walking to the meeting, which was going take place on the street in the Ninth Street Italian Market in South Philadelphia. As he’s walking, Salvie and Gino jump out from behind a car, Salvie has a baseball bat and Gino has a steel bar, and they give Flowers a beating. They tuned him up pretty good.
When an ambulance crew found D’Alfonso, he was semiconscious and bleeding in the street. At the hospital it was determined that his skull had been fractured, his jaw had been broken, several bones in his face were broken, and one of his kneecaps had been shattered.
D’Alfonso would spend the next month in a South Philadelphia hospital recuperating.
By the time he was out, it was almost Christmas and Philadelphia’s new mob don, Nicky Scarfo, decided to throw himself a party.
There was a place on South Street called La Cucina that we used to go to. Sam the Barber, who was with us, owned it. We rented the place out and threw a big party. Everyone in the family was there. You shoulda seen the spread: shrimp, lobster, champagne—the best of everything.
It was a great party.
Everyone who came brought my uncle an envelope for Christmas. Some envelopes had a couple hundred in them, some had a couple thousand.
By the end of the night, I think my uncle had made almost $100,000 just from the envelopes. Some guys would put a Christmas card in the envelope with a nice message for my uncle. He’d laugh as he was taking the cash out, he didn’t give a fuck about the card or what they wrote. It was a shakedown. We weren’t there to sing Christmas carols.
Towards the end of the night I’m sitting at a table with my uncle and Chuckie, and my uncle motions for Salvie to come over.
My uncle says to Salvie, “I think it’s time,” and Salvie says, “Time for what, Nick?” and my uncle says, “Your father,” and Salvie’s eyes get real big.
My uncle says, “It’s two guys,” and he nods towards Chickie Narducci, who is standing a few feet away from us talking to some guys at the bar. “That’s one of ’em, and the other one is the young kid with the pizza shop, Pete’s friend.”
Salvie nods his head and he’s staring straight ahead in Chickie Narducci’s direction, almost like he’s in a trance.
My uncle says, “You handle it how you see fit. I want you to do this for your father and for this family.”
Salvie’s sitting there and his eyes had welled up with tears and he leans in and hugs my uncle and gives him a kiss on the cheek. He wiped his eyes and said, “Thank you, Nick,” and he got up and, boom, he’s out the door. I think his emotions had gotten the best of him.
Now when my uncle became boss, he didn’t come back to Philadelphia and tell everyone what Pete Casella had said at the meeting with the Chin about who was in on the Phil Testa murder. The word going around was that New York had given Pete Casella a pass and that they had retired him to Florida and made my uncle the boss. That was it; that was the story.
No one knew that Pete had given up Chickie and Rocco Marinucci, except for my uncle, and the only people he told were me, Chuckie, and Lawrence. We knew, but no one else in the family knew.
Now we’re at the Christmas party and my uncle tells Salvie and he gives him the okay to kill both guys.
It was a great way to end the year.