Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family (28 page)
Read Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family Online
Authors: Phil Leonetti,Scott Burnstein,Christopher Graziano
Tags: #Mafia, #Nonfiction, #Retail, #True Crime
Moments later, Enrico Riccobene walked into his office at the rear of the store and put a pistol to the side of his head and pulled the trigger. He was so frightened by the site of Philip Leonetti and Salvie Testa that he killed himself.
He was 27 years old.
Salvie Testa was now bragging, “We don’t have to kill these guys anymore; they do it themselves.”
When the news of his nephew’s suicide reached him in prison, Harry the Hunchback’s heart and will were shattered.
Things had gone too far.
Both his brother and now his young nephew were dead.
He was ready to give in and wave the white flag.
During the first week of 1984, the Hunchback sent word to what remained of his crew that the war was over.
Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo had won the war.
The victory entitled Scarfo to everything that belonged to the Riccobenes, a treasure trove of illegal operations that he and his men would devour and add to their already overflowing stable of cash-cow rackets.
But all was not well in the ranks of the tumultuous Scarfo mob, despite the fact that it had won the Riccobene war and that Little Nicky was set to be released from prison in a matter of weeks.
Those in Scarfo’s inner circle didn’t know it yet, but the plot would soon thicken and was about to get even more treacherous than it already was.
B
Y JANUARY 1984, NICKY SCARFO HAD BEEN THE BOSS OF THE PHILADELPHIA-ATLANTIC CITY MOB FOR APPROXIMATELY 34 MONTHS, AND SPENT 17 OF THOSE MONTHS–OR HALF OF HIS TENURE TO THAT POINT—BEHIND BARS IN A FEDERAL PRISON IN EL PASO, TEXAS.
The crime family he had left was not necessarily the crime family he was returning to at the end of his prison sentence.
Simply put, the Scarfo mob was in tatters, with many of Scarfo’s top guys facing legal problems of their own, some of the charges stemming from incidents that occurred while Scarfo’s men were drunk.
For starters, Scarfo’s longtime friend and underboss, Salvatore “Chuckie” Merlino, had been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving in Margate, and during the course of his arrest, the drunken mob under-boss had offered the arresting officer a bribe in the form of his expensive gold watch as the entire episode was captured on videotape. Merlino was booked on attempted bribery and DWI charges, and faced as many as 10 years in state prison.
Merlino’s brother Lawrence had been arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after he got drunk at a wedding and then made terroristic threats to a Philadelphia police officer. Like his brother Chuckie, Lawrence was also facing state prison time.
Despite promising to clean up his act, Nicholas “Nick the Blade” Virgilio was back in trouble after a drunken incident at an Atlantic City casino, where during a fight, he threatened to kill a man. The twice-convicted murderer was sent to state prison for three years as a result.
Scarfo’s own son, Nicky Jr., was facing an underage-drinking rap following an arrest in Atlantic City.
Scarfo capo Joseph “Chickie” Ciancaglini had lost his appeal on federal racketeering charges and was hauled off to federal prison, as was his codefendant, Mario “Sonny” Riccobene, who headed what was left of the Riccobene gang.
Both Raymond “Long John” Martorano and his son Cowboy were facing federal drug charges, and rumors were abound that Long John
would soon face charges for his role in the murder of union boss John McCullough after it was reported that the triggerman Willard “Junior” Moran was cooperating with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office.
Saul Kane was also under investigation on federal drug charges.
Frank Gerace was facing charges that he had embezzled union funds when he was the head of Local 54 and allegedly funneled those funds to Scarfo and Leonetti.
Even Scarfo’s attorney, Bobby Simone, was facing a federal prison sentence after getting indicted for income tax evasion.
But the worst news Scarfo was to hear dealt with his own nephew, Philip Leonetti, who had been indicted on extortion charges stemming from his involvement in a corrupt land deal with the mayor of Atlantic City.
Now while all of the stuff with the Riccobene’s was going on in Philadelphia, I started getting involved with some new things for our family in Atlantic City.
A few years earlier I had been approached by a guy named Frank Lentino—who had been a Teamster, and then was with us in Local 54—about getting involved with a local politician named Mike Matthews, who wanted to become the mayor of Atlantic City.
Mike Matthews sent word through Frank Lentino that he wanted our help in getting him elected. We had given him almost $200,000 for his campaign and had helped him win by getting all of the unions to support him.
One of the first things he did for me was to make a guy who we were close with the chief of police. His name was Joe Pasquale, and me and my uncle both knew him and liked him. We trusted him and he always looked out for us.
Now when I was meeting with Mike Matthews, one of the trade-offs for our support was that we would get a piece of what they called the H tract, which was a 78-acre parcel of land that the city was going to sell to a casino developer for millions of dollars.
It had been a landfill, the site of the city dump. But this was going to be a major score for all of us—me and my uncle, as well as Matthews and Frank Lentino, who had set the whole thing up.
Everything seemed great.
But it wasn’t.
The casino developer who had promised to pay Matthews and Lentino the kickback money that would be used to pay Scarfo and Leonetti turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.
Before long, Leonetti, Lentino, and Matthews were all indicted and looking at lengthy federal prison sentences.
Nicodemo Scarfo would be named as an unindicted coconspirator.
It seemed that the only high-ranking member of the Scarfo mob that didn’t have legal problems was Salvie Testa, Scarfo’s street boss and the leader of the Young Executioners crew.
But Salvie Testa had other problems.
Following the shooting incident in the Italian Market, the handsome young mob captain started dating the beautiful, dark-haired daughter of family underboss Salvatore “Chuckie” Merlino.
Pretty soon the two lovebirds were engaged and a wedding date was set.
The underworld was abuzz at the thought of the Merlino and Testa families, both mob royalty, being aligned through marriage.
Everyone seemed to be happy for them; well, almost everybody.
One day my uncle called the office from jail, and I told him that Salvie had gotten engaged to Chuckie’s daughter. When I said it, there was dead silence on his end of the receiver.
I knew that he wasn’t happy about it. I knew that his paranoia would start, and he would go through every possible scenario of what could happen if Salvie married Chuckie’s daughter. Would they form an alliance and try to overthrow him? Would they try to kill him? Could he ever fully trust that they weren’t plotting against him?
These are all of the thoughts that went through his head in the 15 seconds of silence on the phone. That is how his sick mind worked.
But Scarfo’s worries were for naught, as Salvie Testa would soon break off the engagement, leaving both Chuckie Merlino and his daughter embarrassed and furious.
The once-solid relationship between Nicky Scarfo’s underboss and his street boss was now irrevocably shattered.
And Little Nicky couldn’t have been happier.
My uncle was set to be released from prison right around New Year’s Day in 1984, but the feds didn’t let him out. Bobby Simone and Nicky Jr. flew down to Texas to see what the issue was. After a few days Bobby sorted everything out, and my uncle’s release was back on and scheduled for January 20.
A bunch of us flew down to El Paso to be there when he got out. It was me, Chuckie, Lawrence, Salvie, Bobby Simone, Nicky Jr., Harold Garber, Chuckie’s son Joey, Tory Scafidi, and a few others. We took several suites at the Marriott and we had one giant party in that hotel. We must have spent 20 grand on food and liquor that weekend.
I remember having mixed feelings about my uncle coming home. I knew it meant that my life was going back to the way it was before he went to jail, running around all day, all of the chaos. But that was the life I had chosen, or I guess had been chosen for me. I didn’t have the option of saying, hey, I want to go to college or I want to be a doctor. This was the path that I was put on as a young boy. There was no way to change that. I was born and raised in
this thing,
in
La Cosa Nostra.
So the day he gets out of jail, we take a limousine to the prison. It was me, Lawrence, Nicky Jr., and Bobby Simone.
My uncle comes out and he’s wearing a red Windbreaker and a pair of sunglasses and he has a box containing his belongings. The first thing he says is, “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” and we start heading towards the car. The news media, the FBI, and even the Texas Rangers were there, and everyone was taking pictures. Not the baseball team, the cops. They were wearing the ten-gallon hats and had the stars on their chest, the whole nine yards.
As we’re walking, my uncle nods in their direction and says, “Get a load of these jerk offs in the cowboy hats.”
I knew from my uncle’s demeanor that he had not changed one bit during his 17 months in El Paso. He looked very fit and had a deep tan.
Back at the hotel everyone made a big deal when he got there and we had a good time. He seemed like he was in a good mood. He
pulled me aside at one point and asked me about the money I had collected while he was away. I told him it was just under three million and he was happy. He then pulled me away even further and said, “What’s going on with Salvie and Chuckie?”
I told him Chuckie wasn’t happy that Salvie broke off the engagement but that Chuckie hadn’t said too much about it. He said, “We gotta keep our antennas up on this one; I don’t like this situation.”
I knew right there that my uncle was spooked about the possibility of Salvie marrying Chuckie’s daughter, and then with the engagement being broken off, it seemed like he was even more spooked.
I can’t explain it, but he was always thinking like that. Nothing was simple. Everything had a subplot, and the subplots had subplots. It would make you dizzy listening to him.
Meanwhile, 10 feet away, Chuckie Merlino, Salvie Testa, and the rest of those gathered to celebrate Nicky Scarfo’s release from prison were having a great time and oblivious to what was going on in Scarfo’s head.
To the others, this was just a party. But with Nicky Scarfo, nothing was ever what it seemed.
It was a scene fit for a king. News cameras were everywhere. Photographers snapped shots of his every move. Nicodemo Scarfo’s long-awaited homecoming at the Philadelphia International Airport caused the level of commotion usually reserved for the arrival of a head of state or an A-list celebrity.
And in a lot of ways, it was appropriate. Scarfo had become both.
He was the undisputed head of the Philadelphia–Atlantic City
La Cosa Nostra,
and his notoriety had made him one of the nation’s foremost celebrity gangsters.
Always impeccably dressed and groomed, the 55-year-old Scarfo had become a media sensation, a precursor to the flamboyant John Gotti, who was then still a lowly solider in New York’s Gambino family.
As the cameras flashed and reporters followed his entourage, Little Nicky was carrying himself with a swashbuckling swagger and regal flair not typical of someone who had just been released from prison.
I think in many ways my uncle had become even more self-centered and more self-absorbed during the 17 months that he was away. His ego was a thousand times worse than it was before.