Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family

by Phil Leonetti

  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.

  The Fine Art of Revenge

  FRANK “CHICKIE” NARDUCCI WAS IN A BAD SPOT. WHILE IT APPEARED THAT THE MULTIMILLIONAIRE MOB CAPO HAD SURVIVED THE BLOODLETTING IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE BRUNO AND TESTA KILLINGS, NARDUCCI FACED AN ADVERSARY WITH GREATER MIGHT THAN LITTLE NICKY SCARFO: RICO.

  Narducci was one of several defendants named in a 1980 racketeering indictment brought by the US attorney’s office in Philadelphia aimed at dismantling the Bruno crime family.

  The Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) statute had become the federal government’s most reliable weapon in the war against organized crime.

  Within the scope of a RICO prosecution, the government first had to prove that the defendants were members of an organization and that the organization had engaged in illegal activities.

  The government then had to show that each defendant had participated in at least two predicate crimes on behalf of the organization. Predicate crimes covered under the broad RICO statute included: facilitating illegal gambling operations; loaning money at usurious rates; the trafficking of narcotics; extortion; and acts of violence, including murder.

  In theory, a low-level mob bookmaker who was also a loan shark could find himself facing more serious charges if other members of the organization had committed a murder on behalf of the organization.

  The RICO indictment that charged Narducci, originally included Angelo Bruno and Philip Testa, but both men had died before the case was brought to court.

  Jury selection began on January 4, 1982, inside the federal courthouse, located on Market Street, a few blocks away from Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood, which is one of the most historic areas in the United States.

  Home to the Liberty Bell and the world famous Betsy Ross House, Old City is where the Declaration of Independence was first read and the Constitution of the United States was written.

  In all likelihood none of this was on “Chickie” Narducci’s mind as he and several codefendants left the courthouse after an exhausting fourth day of jury selection.

  The kind of justice that Narducci was to face was not what our nation’s forefathers had in mind.

  That evening as Narducci parked his late model Cadillac half a block away from his South Philadelphia home and exited the car, he heard someone say, “Hey, Frank,” and he turned around to see who was calling.

  It was the Grim Reaper.

  To Narducci’s shock and horror, he was staring at Salvie Testa with a gun in his hand.

  The mob’s longtime gambling czar’s luck was about to run out.

  Testa pumped the first several shots into Narducci’s face from pointblank range and Narducci’s body crumbled into the street below him. Testa and another gunman, his best friend and right-hand man Joseph “Joe Punge” Pungitore, would then empty their guns into Narducci’s fallen body as he lay bleeding and helpless wedged between his car and the curb, stuck in the gutter.

  When it was over, Narducci was dead, having been shot ten times in the face, head, neck, and chest.

  Salvie was on cloud nine after he killed Narducci. That’s how much he hated him for what he had done to his father. He would brag about it and say, “I made sure he knew it was me and I gave him a second, so he knew what was comin’. You shoulda seen the look on his face when he knew I had him.”

  The revenge killing of Chickie Narducci could be justified by Narducci’s involvement in the bombing death of Philip Testa.

  But Scarfo’s next killing seemed to be rooted in only pure evil and vindictiveness.

  My uncle hated this guy from South Philly named Mickey Diamond. Hated him with a passion. This went back 15, 20 years. Mickey Diamond was close with Joseph “Joe the Boss” Rugnetta, who was Ange’s consigliere before Caponigro, and Joe the Boss hated my uncle because my uncle once made a disparaging remark about his daughter. My uncle said she was ugly and Joe the Boss went nuts and wanted Ange to have my uncle killed, but Ange said no. This was in the late ’60s, for Christ’s sake, but ever since then my uncle hated both Joe the Boss and Mickey Diamond.

  Now adding to t
his, around the same time frame, Chuckie Merlino had gotten into trouble with two old-time mob guys. Mickey Diamond had ratted Chuckie out to the old-timers, and they demanded a sit-down with Ange over what happened with Chuckie, and because Joe the Boss was the consigliere, it was his job to mediate the dispute.

  Now at the time, Chuckie wasn’t a made guy but my uncle was, and my uncle and Chuckie were best friends, so my uncle goes to the sit-down and represents Chuckie, he goes to bat for him. This Joe the Boss hated my uncle so much, his recommendation to Ange was that Chuckie should be killed. He wanted to kill Chuckie because Ange wouldn’t let him kill my uncle. My uncle challenged him at the sit-down and this made Joe the Boss hate my uncle even more. These old-timers were all about respect.

  So Ange tells Joe the Boss, he says, “We’re not killin’ the kid, not for this,” meaning Chuckie, and Chuckie apologizes to the old-timers, and the whole thing is forgotten.

  But the venom between my uncle and Joe the Boss continued until he died. I think he died in 1977. When Joe the Boss died, that’s when Caponigro became the consigliere and Mickey Diamond kind of went with Caponigro.

  Once Caponigro got killed, Mickey Diamond was basically out of it, he wasn’t really in play.

  So maybe a week or so after we killed Chickie Narducci, my uncle and I head to the Brajole Café for a meeting. I thought it was going to be just us and Chuckie, but when we get there it’s Chuckie and Frank Monte. A few minutes later, in comes the old-timers who had the beef with Chuckie all those years before. Now all these years later, Chuckie is the underboss and these guys are semiretired. I’m thinking to myself, why is my uncle meeting with these two guys?

  My uncle says to them, “Fellas, I need your help with something.” Now if I don’t know why they are there, I know that they have absolutely no idea why they are there. So they say, “Sure, Nick, what do you need?” And my uncle says, “It’s about your friend Mickey Diamond,” and he makes the sign of the gun and points it to the floor. “He’s gotta go.”

  You shoulda seen the look on their faces; they looked like they were gonna cry. Chuckie even made a face at me like he couldn’t believe my uncle wanted to kill Mickey Diamond after all these years, and he was going to make these two guys do it.

  Now these guys know the rules—they know if they don’t kill Mickey Diamond, my uncle’s gonna kill them. But that was how my uncle was: he never forgot nothin’ and he never forgave no one.

  On February 25, 1982, Philadelphia police found the body of Dominick “Mickey Diamond” DeVito in the trunk of his car parked in a residential neighborhood in South Philadelphia.

  DeVito had been shot in the head with a .38 and his body had been placed in plastic trash bags. His hands and feet had been tied behind him.

  The DeVito killing was the 16th Philly mob killing in six years, and number 17 was less than three weeks away.

  Around this time there was a message on a local TV channel in Atlantic City that played over and over for almost three days that said, “Nicky and Phil, you’re next.” It was handwritten on a piece of paper and was mixed in with some local advertisements. When we saw it, my uncle said, “What the fuck is this?” I later found out that an Atlantic City cop who lived to break balls was the one who wrote it, and him and his friend, another cop who loved to break balls, put it in the projector inside of Convention Hall as a joke.

  There was nothing funny about what would happen next.

  Salvie Testa had started 1982 off by killing Chickie Narducci, one of the men responsible for the bombing death of his father on March 15, 1981.

  The other killer, Rocco Marinucci, thought that Scarfo and Testa were unaware of his involvement in the Philip Testa murder. That’s because guys in Salvie Testa’s crew had been referring burglary jobs to Marinucci, who in addition to making pizzas and nail bombs, was also a renowned burglar.

  Right after Salvie killed Chickie Narducci, he went and grabbed Chickie’s two sons, Frankie and Philip, and brought them in. He told them, “I killed your father, because he killed my father.” Now Frankie and Philip were around La Cosa Nostra all of their life through their father, so they knew the rules. Frankie was a made guy and he was part of Salvie’s crew.

  Now when Salvie tells them this, they knew there is nothing they can say or do about it. If they tried to retaliate, or anything like that, we would have killed them both, and they knew it. So they accepted it for what it was and everyone moved on.

  Now at the time, Frankie Narducci was tight with this Rocco Marinucci, the kid who made the bomb. So Salvie’s crew, which included both Narducci brothers, are feeding this Rocco little jobs and Rocco and Salvie’s guys are making money together, and Rocco thinks he’s in the clear. But this is the trap. It’s just like we did with the concrete union job for Vincent Falcone. And just like Vince, Rocco falls for it.

  Salvie’s guys tell Rocco, “We need you to help us open a safe. We think there’s a couple million in there.”

  So Rocco and Salvie’s guys go to the Buckeye Club in South Philadelphia, which is Frankie Narducci’s place to go over the plan to get the safe and get the tools they needed. Rocco is thinking: this is it, this is the score of a lifetime. Now this whole time, Rocco is dealing with guys in Salvie’s crew, but never Salvie himself.

  So they get to the club, they go inside, and the lights are out. Frankie says, “Must be a bad bulb.” The other guys come in and Rocco is asking them if they brought flashlights so they can see, because the place is pitch black. Frankie says to Rocco, “There’s some flashlights in the backroom and there’s a light switch back there, see if that’s working.” Rocco finds a string hanging from the ceiling and he pulls it, and a dim light goes on, and as Rocco turns around, instead of seeing the flashlights, he sees Salvie Testa.

  The Grim Reaper would strike again.

  Testa and his crew, who were known in law enforcement circles as the Young Executioners, lived up to their name by tying up Marinucci and brutally torturing him for several hours before putting him out of his misery, but things didn’t go quite as Salvie had planned.

  Salvie told me afterwards that he bought a bag of M-80s and cherry bombs, like the firecrackers you see on the Fourth of July. He wanted to torture this kid within an inch of his life, and then when he was ready to kill him, he wanted to put the fireworks in his mouth and keep setting them off until he died. But the problem was the saliva in his mouth made it difficult to light the firecrackers, so they kept beating him and beating him every time they wouldn’t light.

  So finally, Salvie pulls out a gun and empties it into this kid’s head. Then they stuffed three of the firecrackers into his mouth to send a message that the killing was payback for what happened to Salvie’s dad.

  The firecrackers weren’t the only message that Salvie Testa and his Young Executioners crew would send; they purposely committed the murder on March 15, 1982, the one-year anniversary of Philip Testa’s death.

  In less than a year, Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo had established his burgeoning organization as the most ruthless regime in the history of the Philadelphia mob. Gone were the Docile Don days of Angelo Bruno. Nicky Scarfo was a gangster, and the men around him were stone-cold killers.

  This is exactly what my uncle wanted. He wanted people to be afraid of us, and they were. Everyone was scared to death.

  And for good reason.

  Scarfo and Leonetti had turned Atlantic City into the Wild West of the 1970s, with several high-profile gangland killings, and now they were doing the same in the streets of South Philadelphia.

  The Prelude to a War

  AS FAR AS APPEARANCES GO, HARRY “THE HUNCHBACK” RICCOBENE COULD NOT HAVE BEEN LESS INTIMIDATING. BARELY FIVE FEET TALL, WITH A SQUEAKY VOICE, A LONG, BUSHY WHITE BEARD AND, AS YOU MIGHT EXPECT FROM HIS NICKNAME, WALKING WITH A SLUMP DUE TO A CURVATURE OF THE SPINE HE HAD HAD SINCE BIRTH, RICCOBENE DIDN’T LOOK LIKE MUCH TO CONTEND WITH.

  He was.

  Born in Sicily on July 27, 1909, Harry Riccobene ca
me to the United States with his family as a young boy, settling in South Philadelphia and quickly gravitating to a life of crime. Law enforcement records indicate he was inducted into the mob by Prohibition-era don Salvatore Sabella when he was only 17 years old. Benefiting from the early experience of plying his trade in the underworld, he became an expert and well-respected racketeer by the time he reached his 30s, making money from a variety of illicit endeavors and keeping himself continually in the good graces of whoever was running the show in the Philly mob by always giving them a little taste of his action.

  That was until Nicky Scarfo took over.

  Scarfo wasn’t satisfied with prior arrangements.

  He wanted more than a little taste of the Hunchback’s vast riches.

  When he became boss in the spring of 1981, Little Nicky made it known to Riccobene, a onetime underworld ally, that he expected a nonnegotiable set percentage of his monthly cash intake to be collected as part of Scarfo’s aggressive underworld street tax.

  Despite the killings of John Calabrese and Stevie Bouras, and the violent beating of Frank “Frankie Flowers” D’Alfonso—all of whom had balked at paying Scarfo’s street tax—Riccobene, the seasoned old-school mob vet, scoffed at Scarfo’s demand.

  Over the years, Riccobene had built up a strong power base. He surrounded himself with a loyal and well-stocked crew of thugs, thieves, and fellow racketeers who answered to him and to him only. He, in essence, oversaw a family within a family. This fact made him believe he could challenge Scarfo in a street war. And that’s exactly what he did.

  We started having problems with the Riccobenes in 1982. Harry refused to pay the street tax and he was thumbing his nose at my uncle. This drove my uncle crazy. He used to say, “This guy thinks he’s gonna make a jerk off outta me? We’ll see about that.”