Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family

by Phil Leonetti

  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.

  Joe Salerno would later testify that while he and Nicky Scarfo cleaned the apartment, Scarfo told him, “You’re one of us now,” and patted him on the back before doling out more instructions.

  “Tie him up like a cowboy with his hands and feet tied up behind him.”

  When Lawrence Merlino arrived back at the home about 30 minutes later, he discovered that Vince Falcone’s body had been wrapped up in a blanket and tied up exactly as Scarfo had instructed.

  He also discovered something else.

  Lawrence told me when he got there that my uncle was fall-down drunk and he couldn’t even stand up.

  According to Salerno, while he followed Scarfo’s instructions on tying up the body and cleaning the kitchen, Little Nicky sat at the kitchen table and drank the entire bottle of scotch that had been used as a ruse to trap Falcone, and was belittling the dead man and waxing philosophical about what the future held, not only for the Scarfo gang, but for the entire Philadelphia mob.

  “When Lefty goes, I’m gonna be right next to Phil Testa and you’re gonna be one of us,” said a slurring Little Nicky to a shell-shocked Joe Salerno.


  Following Scarfo’s instructions, the men loaded Falcone’s corpse into the trunk of the car they had retrieved, and Scarfo continued to celebrate, saying “I love this” as Falcone’s body was lowered into the trunk.

  Lawrence Merlino then got behind the wheel of Vince Falcone’s car with Falcone’s dead body in the trunk and abandoned it several blocks away on a desolate street, as another car being driven by Falcone, with Little Nicky in the backseat, pulled up beside him and the three men drove back to Atlantic City.

  Margate was a resort town that was full of summer vacationers from Memorial Day to Labor Day, but nine days before Christmas, it was a ghost town—the perfect place to commit a murder and dump a body.

  That night, following the killing, Scarfo, Lawrence Merlino, and Joe Salerno would return to the Scarfo compound on Georgia Avenue, where they encountered Philip Leonetti, Salvatore “Chuckie” Merlino, and Nicholas “Nick the Blade” Virgilio.

  Merlino greeted them by saying, “Lights out, huh?” and gave celebratory hugs and kisses on the cheek to everyone present.

  The five men then settled into Scarfo’s dining room and feasted on a large, home-style Italian meal, while an extremely drunk and elated Little Nicky held court and talked in a hushed tone about who his next victims would be.

  “I wanna cut this Alfredo’s guts out and fry ’em in a pan. He makes me sick. Him and that no good cocksucker Mad Dog DiPasquale; we’re gonna do him next.”

  Philip had never seen his uncle in such a state of delirium.

  You woulda thought he won the lottery; that’s how happy he was that we had killed Vince Falcone. I remember him kissing me on the cheek and telling me that he loved me. That was the first and only time that he did that, and he did it because he was drunk. My uncle never loved anyone or anything in his entire life, except for La Cosa Nostra. That’s all he lived for. He didn’t give a fuck about nothing else, that’s how sick he was.

  Nicky Scarfo even planned a holiday of sorts for the men involved in the killing, telling them that they would travel to Philadelphia the next day for a relaxing steam bath in the shvitzing room of a decades-old, Russian-style bathhouse on Camac Street in South Philadelphia, to be followed by a celebratory dinner at one of Scarfo’s favorite restaurants, the Saloon.

  Scarfo’s jubilation would be short-lived.

  Within a matter of days the body of Vincent Falcone was found and detectives from the Atlantic County Major Crimes Squad were soon knocking on both Scarfo and Leonetti’s doors.

  So I’m in the office and these guys come around, two detectives. They had pictures of the body tied up in the trunk of the car. They say, “Look, Phil, can you help us out? We’re not looking at you guys for this; we know that you and your uncle were friends with Vince. We want to show you what they did to him.” I looked at the pictures and pretended I was sad, and I said, “Guys, I don’t know nothing. I wish I did, Vince was my friend. I don’t know who would do this to him.” So after these guys leave, I drive down to Longport and grab my uncle. We had bought a house for him down there, but no one except for he and I knew about it. Our code name for the house was “toothpaste,” because it was on Colgate Avenue.

  He always had a girlfriend on the side, and whoever he was seeing, lived in that house. So I go down and I tell him what had just happened with the detectives. He was happy. He said, “Tell Lawrence and Joe Salerno to lay low for the next coupla weeks; let’s let this thing die down.” He tells me to pick him up in a couple of hours and that he wants to go to Scannicchio’s for dinner, Vince Sausto’s place.

  When I get back to the office Lawrence was already there, waiting for me, and we went outside and I told him what had happened and what my uncle said about laying low. Lawrence said, “Got it,” and told me he was going to go to Philly for a couple of days.

  Now me and my uncle are eating dinner at Scannichio’s and were both relaxed—we feel good that were not being booked for killing Vince.

  All the sudden, who comes in but Joe Salerno, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. He’s all worked up. He starts saying, “Nick, they’re gonna know that that was my gun that killed him because it was a .32.”My uncle says, “Calm down, Joe, there’s a lot of .32s out there. No one’s gonna know nothing. Just keep your mouth shut and everything’s gonna be fine.” Now a couple weeks before the killing, my uncle asked Joe Salerno, “Hey, Joe, do you have any guns?” Joe told him he had a .32 and my uncle said, “Bring it around, let me take a look at it.” So a few days later Joe Salerno brings the gun around and my uncle tells him, “Let me hold on to this for a while.” What’s Joe Salerno gonna do, say no to my uncle? So we kept the gun and we ended up using it when we killed Vince Falcone.

  Now the next day, the same detectives go see Joe Salerno at his house in Brigantine because they knew he hung around Vince. It’s the same drill they did with me in the office: “We know he was your friend, we want to know who did it.” And Joe Salerno cracks right on the spot. He says, “Philip Leonetti killed him and I was right there.” Now these detectives can’t believe what they are hearing, because they really didn’t think that we were involved, but the more Joe Salerno talks, they realize he’s telling the truth and they are ecstatic because they hated me and my uncle with a passion.

  I mean, these guys wanted us dead. One time after we had Pepe Leva killed, a couple detectives scooped me up and threw me in a van and drove me out towards NAFAC, which is like a military airport 20 miles away from Atlantic City. They thought that I had threatened one of them, which I didn’t, but as we were driving on this deserted road out by the airport, they slide open the door of the van and are hanging me outside like they are going to push me out. The van was going like 60 miles per hour at the time. They are telling me, “If anything happens to one of us, we will kill all of you. Do you understand?” They’ve got a gun to my head while I’m dangling out of the van. I stopped paying attention to them and started thinking about jumping and how I would land if I did. I remember thinking to myself, “These are the good guys?” But after a few minutes, they pulled me back in the van and took me back to Atlantic City. So I know that when Joe Salerno gives us up, to these guys it was like winning the Super Bowl.

  Within a few hours, Joe Salerno was in protective custody giving law enforcement officials a play-by-play account of exactly what had happened to Vince Falcone.

  It was clear that Joe Salerno had chosen not to accept Nicky Scarfo’s invitation to join the mob.

  The next thing you know, me, my uncle, and Lawrence are sitting in the Atlantic County Jail, and guess who’s not there with us—Joe Salerno. We found out that the cops from Major Crimes went right to Joe Salerno’s house in Brigantine, and he gave us right up. Now my uncle is pacing, like a tiger in a cage. Me, him, and Lawrence are sitting in the holding cell. My uncle is talking out loud to himself, and me and Lawrence are just sitting there. “This isn’t good,” he said, “This is gonna be bad. We’re in trouble with this one.” Now I’m sitting there thinking to myself, Jesus Christ, I can’t believe how stupid I was to get arrested again for murder. First, the Pepe Leva thing, and now this. I was also angry with myself because I knew I should have shot Joe Salerno the way he was carrying on. I shoulda blasted him right there, and instead of ratting us out to the cops, he’d be in the trunk of the car with Vince. So while we were in the holding cell, my uncle says to me, “Call this cocksucker, Joe Salerno, and see if you can get a read on him.”

  So I call Joe’s house and his wife answers and she puts him on. So I said, “Hey, Joe, what’s going on?” And he said, “What’s going on with you guys? I saw on TV that you guys got locked up. I know your uncle has to be going nuts in there with his allergies and all the dust in there.” He was all worked up; just like he was the night we killed Vince. So I told him, “My uncle is fine, me and Lawrence are fine, we’re all doing good.” Then I asked him, “Did you go see that job in Brigantine? There was a contracting job that me and him were supposed to go look at it; we were going
to work on it together.”So Joe says, “I can’t do nothing, the cops are everywhere.” So I said, “Hey, Joe, why don’t you come down and see us. I’d love to see you and I know my uncle and Lawrence would love to see you.” And Joe says, “I can’t, Philip, I got nine-thousand cops here, asking me questions.” So I said, “Joe, we didn’t do nothing wrong, did you do something wrong?” He said, “I didn’t do nothing wrong, Philip.” I said, “Don’t worry about this. This is a big misunderstanding.”He said, “I know, Philip.” I said, “Just tell the truth, Joe. We didn’t do anything to Vince. He was our friend.” And Joe says, “Okay, Philip.” So I hang up and I tell my uncle what he said and he just shakes his head. He sits down on the bench and he tells me and Lawrence, “Look, we got our hands full on this one with this Joe Salerno. But we’re gonna make bail and we’re gonna fight the case. We’re gonna do whatever we gotta do to beat this thing.”

  Scarfo, Leonetti, and Merlino would spend the Christmas holiday in the Atlantic County Jail as detectives from the Atlantic County Major Crime Squad packed up Joe Salerno and his family, and moved them out of town and into the Witness Protection Program.

  Our bails were $150,000 and we had the lawyers working on getting that together.

  By New Year’s Eve, all three defendants were out of jail and back on Georgia Avenue, awaiting a trial that was several months away.

  As the clock struck midnight and the ball dropped in Times Square, the 1970s were over.

  It was 1980.

  The Ides of March, Part I [1980]

  AS NICKY SCARFO, PHILIP LEONETTI, AND LAWRENCE MERLINO SETTLED INTO LIFE OUTSIDE OF THE ATLANTIC COUNTY JAIL, THEY WERE NOT ENTIRELY FREE.

  Our bail restricted us from traveling outside of Atlantic County. That meant we weren’t able to meet with guys like Caponigro or Bobby Manna to know what was going on in North Jersey or New York. Now remember, a few months before we killed Vince Falcone we had that dinner with Bobby Manna in North Jersey and that got my uncle’s antenna up that something was going on, that maybe there was gonna be a move against Ange. Also, we were still going back and forth with Ange over the union dispute.