Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family

by Phil Leonetti

  We tried everything to bring him in and get him on board, but Harry was a stubborn old-time siggy, and he made it clear that he didn’t acknowledge my uncle as his boss and he wasn’t going to pay us.

  He left us no choice. We had to kill him.

  Scarfo decided to send his consigliere, Frank Monte, and the treacherous Raymond “Long John” Martorano to see Harry’s younger brother, Mario “Sonny” Riccobene, with an order from Scarfo that Sonny help in setting up his brother to be killed.

  The move backfired.

  Instead of joining the assault against his brother, Sonny Riccobene went to his brother and warned him of the pending plot to kill him and who was involved.

  The Hunchback’s response was loud and left little doubt that he was more than willing to go toe-to-toe with Little Nicky.

  A few weeks later, on May 13, Frank Monte was gunned down while standing in front of his car at a South Philadelphia gas station by Joseph Pedulla and Victor DeLuca, two hit men in Riccobene’s crew who had been lying in wait for the mob consigliere in a parking lot across the street from the gas station with a powerful scope-fitted rifle.

  The Riccobenes had struck first.

  Nicky Scarfo was incensed.

  The war was on.

  An Old Foe Returns

  AS IF A STREET WAR WITH HARRY RICCOBENE IN SOUTH PHILADELPHIA WASN’T ENOUGH, NICKY SCARFO AND PHILIP LEONETTI SOON BECAME SADDLED WITH A NEW PROBLEM FROM AN OLD FOE IN ATLANTIC CITY.

  Now right around the time we started beefing with Harry, Frank Gerace gets word to us through Bobby Lumio that he needs to see me and my uncle.

  Frank Gerace was a bartender who we knew, and we made him the president of Local 54, which was the biggest union in Atlantic City representing the hotel and restaurant workers in the casinos. At the time they had like 15,000 people in the union and they were strong, but we made them even stronger.

  Bobby Lumio was a made guy who my uncle put in a powerful position at Local 54. He was the secretary-treasurer and was on the executive board. He also lived in one of our apartments on Georgia Avenue.

  At the time, Bobby was dying. He had real bad cancer, and the doctors had only given him a few months to live.

  Bobby tells me one day, “You gotta get with Percy,” meaning Frank Gerace, “He has a problem with Joe Salerno.”

  I say to Bobby, “Joe Salerno the plumber? They got him in the Witness Protection Program. How’s he making trouble for Frank Gerace?”

  I’m thinking maybe his medicines got him loopy, because Joe Salerno isn’t around anymore, and I don’t think he planned on coming back because he knew we would have killed him.

  So Bobby’s lying there in the bed and he says, “You gotta get with Percy.”

  So the next day I send for Frank Gerace and I have him meet me down in Margate near a place that I had on Adams Avenue. When he gets there I tell him what Bobby had told me, and he says, “It’s true, Philip. Joe Salerno is gonna testify against me at a hearing with the state. They are trying to get me out of Local 54 because they are saying I am with you and your uncle and Joe Salerno is their main witness.”

  I told Frank I would talk to my uncle and we would figure things out.

  Now this is bad. We made a lot of money from Local 54. We were getting 50, 60, sometimes $100,000 a month, all of it in cash. If Frank Gerace got bumped out, it was going to be a problem for our family.

  I knew my uncle was going to go nuts when he found out. Winning the Falcone murder trial wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to kill Joe Salerno for testifying against us, but we couldn’t get to him because he was in the Witness Protection Program.

  Every time we were around the Narducci brothers, Frank and Philip, my uncle used to ask them, “You guys seen Salerno around?” because Joe Salerno’s family lived right near where the Narducci’s lived. When Frank or Philip would say no, my uncle would go into a tirade about Joe Salerno, calling him a “no good rat motherfucker” or calling him a “cocksuckin’ rat” and he would tell them, “If that motherless fuck ever shows his face, it’s this,” and he’d make the sign of the gun, “I don’t care who he’s with. He could be with the pope and it’s this,” and make the sign of the gun.

  So the next morning when I pick up my uncle, I tell him about my conversation with Bobby Lumio and Frank Gerace. He went berserk about Joe Salerno. He said, “This motherfucker wants to keep trying to hurt us, we’re gonna hurt him. We’re gonna see how he likes it. This no-good rat motherfucker.”He was irate. One, because he was gonna testify against us again, and two, because this time it could cost us a lot of money.

  He said, “Today, when we go see Bobby, I want him to get to the bottom of this.” We were on our way to Philadelphia to see Bobby Simone, who was representing my uncle on his appeal of the federal gun charge.

  The whole ride up, we’re not talking, because we never talked in the car or even near the car, but every 10 minutes or so my uncle would say, “This motherfucker,” or mutter something to himself about Joe Salerno. I’m riding next to him and he’s talking to himself like a crazy person.

  So we get to Bobby’s office and he tells my uncle that if he doesn’t win the appeal on the gun case that he was looking at two years in prison, and he’d have to do about 18 months.

  It was almost like my uncle didn’t hear a word Bobby said. He said, “Look, Bob, I’m not worried about the gun case. If I have to do the two years, I’ll do the two years. I need you to look into this thing for me,” and he told him all about the thing with Joe Salerno and Frank Gerace.

  Bobby said, “Okay, Nick,”and he started talking about the gun case again and my uncle waved him off and said, “Bob, we need to focus on this thing with Joe Salerno. We can worry about the gun case later.”

  Bobby told us to give him a few days to see what was going on.

  During this time, Bobby Lumio was in a real bad shape. He was on his deathbed. One of the last things he said was, “Tell my friend I will miss him.” He was talking about my uncle. This was on his deathbed.

  So after Bobby dies, my uncle hears what he had said and my uncle said, “I don’t give a fuck about him; nobody’s gonna miss him.” This was a guy who was with us, a made guy, who while he was dying was looking out for us by tipping us off about the thing with Joe Salerno and Frank Gerace. But now that Bobby was dead, he couldn’t do anything for my uncle. That’s how he thought. That’s how evil of a guy he was.

  So about a week later Bobby Simone comes down to see us and we walk up to the boardwalk and he tells us that Joe Salerno is scheduled to testify before the state and that if things go bad, Frank Gerace is going to be removed as the president of Local 54 and that there could be an indictment for labor racketeering charges.

  My uncle looks at me and shakes his head and says, “These fuckin’ rats, we gotta do something here. We can’t just sit back and watch. We gotta take action.”

  I didn’t know what to say; what could I say? Joe Salerno was in the Witness Protection Program. It’s not like he was in Atlantic City or South Philadelphia and we could kill him. We had no idea where he was.

  A week later, under the protection the United States Marshals Service, Joe Salerno would testify before the New Jersey State Casino Control Commission about Local 54 and its connections to Nicky Scarfo, Philip Leonetti, and the mob.

  His testimony touched on his relationship with Scarfo, Leonetti, the Merlino brothers, and mob killer Nicholas “Nick the Blade” Virgilio in the late 1970s, and each of their relationships with the union, and then went on to detail once again the night that Philip Leonetti murdered Vincent Falcone.

  As Salerno testified, he wore a dark hood over his head with holes cut out around his eyes, so that his identity could remain a secret. There were more than a dozen armed US Marshals in and around the building where Salerno was testifying, which was located at the corner of Tennessee and the boardwalk in Atlantic City, less than two miles from Scarfo’s Georgia Avenue headquarters.

  Salerno’s te
stimony included a story about an incident in which Nicky Scarfo lost his temper at Bobby Lumio, a high-ranking official of Local 54, after Lumio made a joke that Scarfo didn’t find funny.

  According to Salerno’s testimony, Scarfo said to Lumio, “Let me tell you something, I got you your job and I got that other big fat jerk off downstairs his job, and don’t you ever fuckin’ forget it.”

  Based in large part on the testimony of Joe Salerno, Frank Gerace was disqualified from having any further association with Local 54, as were several of his top associates, which meant that Nicky Scarfo and Philip Leonetti no longer controlled the union through Gerace.

  So after we get the news that Frank Gerace is out, my uncle is furious. He was so full of venom against Joe Salerno. He said, “Do you believe this motherfucker? Can you believe what he did to us? We can’t let this stand.” He was enraged.

  The Summer of ’82

  NICKY SCARFO WAS A VOLATILE, HOMICIDAL MANIAC ON A GOOD DAY, BUT THE CLIMATE AROUND HIM IN THE SUMMER MONTHS OF 1982 MADE HIM AN UNTAMED BEAST WHOSE PENCHANT FOR BLOOD AND VIOLENCE HAD REACHED AN ALL-TIME HIGH.

  As if the murder of his trusted aide Frank Monte and the war with Harry Riccobene weren’t enough, Scarfo had just lost control of the biggest union in Atlantic City and the riches that came with it, which amounted to almost a million per year in tax-free cash and the unbridled power that came from controlling a union with thousands of members.

  Add to that the two-year federal prison sentence that was hanging over his head on the 1979 weapon charge and Little Nicky wasn’t exactly in what you’d call a good place.

  Plus his allergies were bothering him.

  My uncle’s allergies were real bad and when they were bothering him, forget about it, he was the most miserable human being on the planet. Everybody would stay away; that’s how bad he was.

  Now around this time, we had our hands full and my uncle was unbearable, the worst I’d ever seen him.

  One day my uncle says to me, “Let’s take a walk,” and we start walking up Georgia Avenue towards the boardwalk. We were going to meet Salvie and Philip Narducci in front of Convention Hall.

  As we are walking my uncle starts telling me a story about the Blade getting drunk in the casino and starting a fight and causing this big scene. I figure he’s gonna tell me to go to the casino and straighten it out.

  He says, “This fuckin’ guy is an embarrassment, the way he conducts himself with the drinking and all this nonsense, I’ve had it up to here with him and I am done with his shenanigans. I want you to take him for a walk down the alleys behind the house and I want you to kill him right there in the alley, leave him in the gutter where he belongs with all his drinking.”

  I’m thinking to myself, “Jesus Christ, with everything we got goin’ on, now we’re gonna start killing our own guys? What are we doing?”

  After flippantly ordering the murder of Nicholas “Nick the Blade” Virgilio, one of his oldest friends, Nicky Scarfo was about to cross an even more sinister line with his next murder plot.

  So now we’re on the boardwalk and Salvie and Philip were there waiting for us. Like clockwork my uncle says to Philip, “You seen that cocksucker Joe Salerno around?” and Philip says, “Not the kid, but I see his old man all the time. He owns a motel down in Wildwood.” It was almost like I could see the lightbulb go off in my uncle’s head. I could read him like a book, I knew what was comin’ next.

  Without hesitation my uncle says to Philip, “I want you to go see the old man, and when you do, it’s this,” and he makes the sign of the gun. “We’re gonna teach these animals a lesson.”

  Philip says, “Okay, Nick,” and Salvie shoots me a look like, “What the fuck is this?” This was against the rules and what we were supposed to stand for. Joe Salerno’s father was a civilian; he wasn’t involved with us or this thing and now we’re gonna kill him because of something his son did. I knew this was a big, big mistake, but with my uncle there was no questioning him.

  My uncle then turned to Salvie and said, “Everybody connected to our friend, the dwarf,”meaning Harry Riccobene, “it’s this,” and he makes the sign of the gun. “All of ’em, his whole regime. You’re in charge, get it done.”

  In a span of about 15 minutes, Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo had ordered the murders of Nicholas “Nick the Blade” Virgilio, Joe Salerno Sr., Harry “the Hunchback” Riccobene, and everyone connected to Riccobene’s crew.

  My head was spinning. It was like he wanted to kill everyone and everything around him. It was a never-ending cycle with him.

  Wasting no time carrying out Scarfo’s orders, Salvie Testa drafted a list of everyone connected to the Riccobene faction and ordered that they be killed on sight.

  Within days, Salvatore “Wayne” Grande, an ambitious Scarfo assassin and trusted member of Salvie Testa’s Young Executioners crew, caught the Hunchback all by himself on a South Philadelphia street corner, standing in a phone booth.

  The Hunchback was a sitting duck.

  Wayne Grande ambushed Riccobene, blasting him with five shots from a revolver at close range, but miraculously, the 73-year-old Hunchback was able to wrestle the gun away from the 28-year-old Grande before he could finish the job.

  When Philadelphia police arrived moments later they found Riccobene leaning against the phone booth, bleeding and holding his assassin’s gun.

  When he was asked how he was able to wrestle the gun from his would-be killer, the Hunchback responded, “He was done with it, so I took it.”

  Riccobene would later tell associates he knew that the weapon was a six-shot revolver and had counted the five shots that had hit him. Knowing that there was one bullet left, Riccobene stated he took the gun and attempted to shoot his assailant with the sixth bullet, but the gun was empty.

  So far, Harry the Hunchback was winning the war and he was about to return fire with a strike of his own.

  While Scarfo’s gunmen were out looking to kill everyone who was part of the Riccobene faction, the Riccobenes were out looking to kill the men aligned with Scarfo.

  In late July, Joseph Pedulla and fellow Riccobene loyalist Victor DeLuca found Salvie Testa eating clams while sitting on a wooden crate in the middle of the famous Ninth Street Italian Market, and hit him with multiple shotgun blasts fired from their passing car.

  The hit team of Pedulla and DeLuca had previously killed Scarfo’s consigliere, Frank Monte, and now had wounded his street boss.

  The spry and vibrant Testa had half of his left shoulder blown off, but like the Hunchback, he survived the attack and after some time in the hospital, he was back on the street leading Little Nicky’s assault on Riccobene and his renegades.

  Shortly after the shooting of Salvie Testa in the Italian Market, Joey Grande, a Scarfo hit man and the brother of Wayne Grande, fired multiple shots at Riccobene as he sat behind the wheel of his Mercedes on a South Philadelphia street corner. However, once again, the old man survived, failing to take a single bullet.

  Things were at a standstill. Tensions were increasing and the local press was having a field day as the streets of Philadelphia were engulfed in an all-out mob war.

  But killing Harry Riccobene wasn’t the only thing on Nicky Scarfo’s mind.

  A few weeks later on August 9, 1982, Joseph Salerno Sr. was in the office of the motel he owned in Wildwood Crest, which was a short distance from the beach and the famous Wildwood Boardwalk, which was one of the most popular destinations at the Jersey Shore.

  The NO VACANCY sign was lit, yet a young man was pacing outside the office door wearing a jogging suit and a hooded sweatshirt. He was 19-year-old Philip Narducci, the son of the late Frank “Chickie” Narducci.

  When Joe Salerno Sr. opened the door, Narducci took a handgun out of his pocket and fired two shots at him, one of which struck him in the neck.

  Salerno Sr. was not only alive, but he was able to talk to the paramedics who arrived on the scene and took him to the hospital.

  While Phil
ip Narducci, the young would-be mob assassin, had failed to kill Joe Salerno Sr., Nicky Scarfo’s message had been delivered: If you betray me, I will find you and kill you. And if I cannot find you, I will kill your family.

  This ominous message still haunts many today, including Philip Leonetti, more than two decades after the shooting of Joe Salerno Sr.

  The shooting of Salerno Sr. made front-page news in Philadelphia and all throughout South Jersey, and the headlines were the kind that Little Nicky loved.

  The day after the shooting, there were more cops following us than ever. They were everywhere. My uncle said to me, “Look at all these cocksuckers watchin’ us. They got nothing better to do.” I knew we had made a big mistake when my uncle ordered the hit on Joe Salerno’s father, and I think my uncle did, too, but he would never say it.

  If Scarfo didn’t know that trying to kill the father of a federally protected witness was likely to draw the ire of law enforcement, he would get the message loud and clear less than a week later, when the FBI arrested him on Georgia Avenue and whisked him away.

  We were standing in front of the office when all the sudden here comes the cops up the street. It was a one-way and they were coming in both directions. Like five or six cars. It was just me and my uncle. There’s like 20 guys. They all got guns.

  My uncle says, “What the fuck is all this?” and they moved in and grabbed him, handcuffed him and threw him in the back of one of the cars. They grabbed me, but they let me go once he was in the car. They were only there for him. Before they pulled off I heard him say, “Call Bobby” and that was it, they were gone. It was the FBI; I knew he was in trouble.

  The US attorney’s office in Camden had filed a motion to revoke Scarfo’s bail pending appeal because they claimed to have evidence that he had violated the conditions of his bail by associating with convicted felons. The judge took the unusual step of issuing a body warrant for Scarfo in lieu of scheduling a hearing first.