Read Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family Online
Authors: Phil Leonetti,Scott Burnstein,Christopher Graziano
Tags: #Mafia, #Nonfiction, #Retail, #True Crime
Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family (8 page)
The city’s crown jewel, the Atlantic City Boardwalk, would be constructed in 1870 and was a seven-mile stretch of oceanfront property that featured a diverse array of decadence and commerce.
In 1878, the Philadelphia to Atlantic City railroad was constructed as a means of bringing tourists to the seaside resort.
In 1880, the city was officially open for business.
Within five years, Atlantic City was one of the top tourist attractions in the world and by the turn of the 20th century the area experienced a massive real estate boom, finding itself on the cutting edge of both hotel architecture and high-society culture.
Extravagant hotels and posh restaurants and nightclubs dotted every inch of the boardwalk and its surrounding area and the city became a playground for the country’s rich and famous.
During Prohibition, Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, the colorful Atlantic County treasurer and racketeer ushered in an era that bolstered more corruption and decadence than the notoriously crooked coastal enclave had ever seen.
Controlling the state’s extremely powerful Republican political machine with an iron fist, Johnson became the unofficial ambassador for Atlantic City and oversaw a wide array of vice rackets that included bootlegging, illegal gambling, and prostitution. Nucky encouraged racketeers from all over the country to set up shop in Atlantic City and many obliged him, paying him for the opportunity to do so.
The city by the Atlantic was now the World’s Playground. With booze and broads by the boatload, it became the mecca of vice, in essence, the original Sin City long before modern Las Vegas was even contemplated.
Nucky Johnson’s life would forever be memorialized in HBO’s popular television series
Boardwalk Empire,
which chronicled Atlantic City in the 1920s from the perspective of a corrupt political boss named Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, a character played by actor Steve Buscemi and loosely based on Johnson and his political regime.
Nucky Johnson’s reign as both Atlantic City’s political boss and top vice lord crumbled in 1941 when he was convicted on charges of tax evasion for hiding proceeds from several policy lottery operations he was running throughout the city. He was sent off to federal prison for the next few years.
As World War II came to an end, so did Atlantic City’s tenure as the World’s Playground.
By the 1950s, Atlantic City had lost its luster. Year-round tropical destinations like Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas had become cheaper and more popular alternatives with everyday Americans and the rich and famous, also heading west for Las Vegas, the up-and-coming desert oasis that had by then eclipsed Atlantic City as the new mecca of vice.
With the Atlantic City Boardwalk decaying and poverty engulfing the city’s economy, most of the grand hotels of yesteryear, like the Breakers, the Shelbourne, the Traymore, the Mayflower, and the Marlborough, were all demolished.
Drugs and crime replaced fun in the sun as the region’s most prominent features. Press coverage of the city’s plight, stemming from the conditions encountered by the national media when they descended on Atlantic City for the 1964 Democratic Convention sent tourists scurrying.
As the late 1960s became the early 1970s, the once bustling resort town had gone bust.
It was practically a ghost town.
It wouldn’t be for long.
And the “boardwalk empire” that Little Nicky was building would make Nucky Johnson wet his tweed trousers.
T
HE DATE WAS JUNE 2, 1977, AND EARLY THAT THURSDAY MORNING THERE WAS SOMETHING IN THE AIR–SOMETHING THAT HAD NOT BEEN PRESENT IN THESE PARTS FOR MORE THAN THREE DECADES.
Hope.
Hope that the big announcement, scheduled for noon at Kennedy Plaza, the ceremonious pavilion in front of the mammoth Convention Hall on the Atlantic City Boardwalk would restore the city to prominence.
Hope that the governor’s announcement would breathe life into a city rapidly decaying under an increasing influx of crime, poverty, and neglect.
Hope that the second coming of Atlantic City was imminent and that the World’s Playground was about to be resurrected.
It was hope that filled the air that Thursday morning, hope mixed with optimism, skepticism, and a palpable sense of excitement that things were about to change.
As the crowd swelled, nearing 1,000, the dignitaries begin to take their seats behind the podium on the makeshift stage. Francis “Hap” Farley, the once powerful state senator who succeeded Nucky Johnson as the boss of the Republican political machine that controlled Atlantic City, was already seated. Once considered the most feared politician in the state, Farley was now a shell of his former self, and on this day he was merely a spectator.
Seated near Farley was the man who dethroned him, Atlantic City’s new state senator Dr. Joseph McGahn, the cosponsor of the bill that was about to change Atlantic City forever, the man who was once lauded by the
New York Times
as the “principal architect” that made that change possible.
But the star of the show on this day, the man everyone came to see was New Jersey governor Brendan Byrne. Byrne was here to announce that legalized casino gambling was coming to the Atlantic City Boardwalk.
But Byrne’s message of a renaissance for Atlantic City came with a warning—a warning for men like Angelo Bruno, Phil Testa, Nicky Scarfo, Nicholas “Nick the Blade” Virgilio, and Philip Leonetti:
“I have made this pledge before to all law enforcement agencies and I will repeat it again. We will keep the limelight of public opinion focused upon organized crime. I’ve said it before and I will repeat again to organized crime: keep your filthy hands off of Atlantic City; keep the hell out of our state.”
At that very moment, less than four blocks away in a small ground-floor office located at 28 North Georgia Avenue, Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo and Philip “Crazy Phil” Leonetti—precisely two of the men that Byrne was speaking of—were watching the pomp and circumstance on live television.
“What’s this guy talkin’ about?” Scarfo said out loud to Leonetti, “Doesn’t he know we’re already here?”
Leonetti just laughed.
There was nothing funny about what would happen next.
I
N FACT, SCARFO HAD BEEN ATLANTIC CITY’S PRIMARY UNDERWORLD FIGURE FOR MORE THAN A DECADE, HAVING ASSUMED THE POSITION LONG BEFORE ANYONE EVEN DREAMED OF LEGALIZED CASINO GAMBLING AND A REBIRTH FOR ATLANTIC CITY.
My uncle had built a nice little crew. For the most part it was me, Chuckie, Lawrence, and the Blade. We were all with my uncle and my uncle was basically reporting directly to Phil Testa, who by now had become Ange’s underboss. We were the top guys in Atlantic City. Everything down there went through us. Nobody made a move or thought about making a move without checking with my uncle first.
My uncle had two posters that hung on the wall of our office on Georgia Avenue, each showing a baseball field with all of the bases and home plate. My uncle never watched a game of baseball a day in his life and he thought baseball players, athletes, and anyone who wasn’t in the mob were jerk offs. But these posters weren’t about baseball to my uncle; they symbolized his philosophy of being a gangster.
The first poster had the words “This is a Home Run” at the top and showed the hitter rounding the bases, touching each base and eventually crossing home plate. The second poster had the words “This is NOT a Home Run” at the top and showed the hitter rounding the bases, but missing second base. My uncle would show people those posters and say, “Ya see what happened?” and he would point to the second poster and say, “This motherfucker hit a home run, but he didn’t touch the base, so it didn’t count. This thing we’re doin’, this ain’t baseball and this ain’t a game. In this thing, if you don’t touch the base, you get this,” and he would make his sign like the sign of the gun. He wanted to know what everyone was doing at all times. Touching base with your superiors in the mob was also one of the rules.
By this point Scarfo’s reputation as a killer had made him the premier force to be reckoned with in Atlantic City, and in 1976 and when a low-level card shark and hustler named Louie DeMarco had run afoul of the Bruno mob and was hiding out in Scarfo’s town, Angelo Bruno sent word from Philadelphia down to Nicky Scarfo in Atlantic City that DeMarco was to be killed.
Scarfo was happy to oblige.
This kid Louie DeMarco was robbing Chickie Narducci’s crap games in Philadelphia. Chickie Narducci was one of Angelo Bruno’s top guys. His crap games brought in a lot of money for the family. So Chickie Narducci goes and sees Phil Testa and Angelo Bruno and makes a beef about what is going on. Bruno and Testa tell Narducci they are gonna find Louie DeMarco and have him killed. Disrespecting a made guy is against the rules and Chickie Narducci was a made guy.
So what happens is, Phil Testa waits a week before calling my uncle and telling him that he wants us to kill Louie DeMarco for robbing Chickie Narducci. Phil Testa and Chickie Narducci had a kind of love/hate relationship. They were always on again, off again, and at the time they were having problems, so Phil Testa was kind of dogging it. My uncle was unhappy because Phil Testa waited a week and didn’t tell him right away. My uncle wanted people to know what kind of people we were, that if we were asked to kill someone, we would do it right away, without any hesitation. Our philosophy was
Bang! Bang!
And that was that. So my uncle assigns the killing to me and Vince Falcone so we can prove to my uncle and guys like Ange and Phil Testa that we were killers and that we were serious men like my uncle.
So we put some feelers out on the street to see if anyone has a line on where this Louie DeMarco might be hiding out at. We hear that he is staying at the Ensign Motel on Pacific Avenue. So I go see a guy I know named Harry the Hat who had a coffee shop on Missouri Avenue. It was like a hangout; everybody would hang there. Harry the Hat was Skinny Razor’s brother-in-law, and he knew everybody in Atlantic City. So I ask him if he knows who Louie DeMarco is and Harry the Hat pointed him out to me—he was actually sitting right there in the coffee shop playing cards. So I
have Vince Falcone with me and we stay for a little while and when Louie DeMarco leaves, we follow him to the Ensign Motel. He has no idea who we are or that we are following him. There was a local bartender who was with us who had a room at the Ensign, and he gave us the key to his room so that we could wait until DeMarco came out of his room—so that we could get him.
Philip Leonetti, just 23 years old, was about commit his first murder.
I remember my uncle telling me and Vince that Chickie Narducci wanted this guy real bad and that if we killed him it would put me and Vince on the map with Philadelphia, which meant Angelo Bruno and Phil Testa and make my uncle’s stature in the family stronger, because everyone would know that his crew was serious and that we were gangsters and killers.
I remember being nervous, but I wasn’t scared. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. Louie DeMarco was robbing Chickie Narducci and Chickie Narducci was in our family. Louie DeMarco had broken the rules and when you break the rules, you get killed. This is what my uncle had always taught me. This is what
La Cosa Nostra
was all about. Before the money, before the power, before everything came the rules.
Louie DeMarco was getting ready to leave his room at the Ensign Motel and he had no idea what was coming.
So we see him walking out and we run up on him. Me and Vince had masks and gloves on. We were behind him; he never saw us coming.
I was the first one to shoot and I blasted him right in the back of his head. After I shot him I thought he was running away, but it was the force of the bullet that made him fly forward and he landed face down. Then me and Vince just emptied our guns into him. I think the first shot killed him. We did it right in the parking lot, right on Pacific Avenue in broad daylight. I remember standing over him and emptying my gun into him. I remember the feeling I had; I felt cold and I didn’t feel any remorse.
Louie DeMarco was dead and Philip Leonetti was now a bona fide mob killer, just like his uncle Nicky Scarfo.
My uncle had me and Vince go over an escape route a few days before the killing. We walked that route several times to make sure we knew where we were going. My uncle told us that after we killed him, he wanted us to throw the guns on the roof of a nearby building, which we did. We then followed the route that we had planned and my uncle was waiting there in a car to pick us up. We get in the car and no one says a word, we just drive to the apartment on Georgia Avenue.
Now a few days before the killing, my uncle took me and Vince for a walk-and-talk through the neighborhood. My uncle didn’t discuss killings in the house, and he was paranoid about listening devices. He didn’t own a phone. Everything with him was face to face. So while we are walking he’s telling us that we can’t wear any jewelry when we do a hit, in case it came off and could be traced back to us. He told us not to say a word when we got in the car and not to speak about the murder when we got back to Georgia Avenue. He told us we had to immediately take a shower and wash real good under our nails and make sure that we had gotten rid of any possible gunpowder residue. He told us to take all the clothes that we had worn and to put them in a trash bag. After we got cleaned up, we would have to go somewhere outside of Atlantic City and dump the bag with the clothes in it. That’s what we did after a killing; that was the routine.