Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family

by Phil Leonetti

  Several hundred miles away from them sat Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, the 60-year-old, jailed-for-life Mafia don. At the same time he was growing accustomed to spending the rest of his life inside an 8 x 10 concrete cell, Scarfo was also full of rage and vengeance, angered over the stunning betrayal of his sister and his nephew.

  Little Nicky would vow revenge from the confines of his cage. The word on the street was that there was a $500,000 bounty that would be paid to anyone who found and killed his sister Nancy, and his nephew Philip Leonetti.

  But what was most pressing in the tortured mind of Nicky Scarfo was keeping his son Nicky Jr. safe from a blossoming rival mob faction, and preserving both his power and legacy as the undisputed boss of the Philadelphia–Atlantic City La Cosa Nostra, despite being sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

  Nicky Jr., 24, was the only one of Nicky Scarfo’s three sons who gravitated toward La Cosa Nostra. Scarfo’s oldest son, Chris, had legally changed his last name and was working as a legitimate businessman in the Atlantic City area, having very little, if anything, to do with his imprisoned father.

  Scarfo’s youngest son, Mark, still a teenager, remained in a comatose state following a suicide attempt on November 1, 1988, in the middle of his father’s RICO trial.

  Nicky Jr., who was not yet a formally made member of La Cosa Nostra, was acting as his father’s proxy, and as such, was tasked with meeting underlings and carrying out his father’s orders, working side by side with his father’s cousin, Anthony “Cousin Tony” Piccolo, who had briefly served as Scarfo Sr.’s consigliere and was now his handpicked street boss.

  On October 31, 1989, almost a year to the day of his brother Mark’s suicide attempt, Nicky Jr. traveled from Atlantic City to Philadelphia in the late afternoon to meet with Bobby Simone to discuss his father’s appeal. After meeting with Simone, Scarfo Jr. and a companion headed downtown for a dinner meeting with several associates inside of Dante and Luigi’s, one of South Philadelphia’s premier Italian restaurants, and one of Nicky Sr.’s favorites.

  Inside the restaurant, the young son of a jailed mob solider stopped by Nicky Jr.’s table and said hello. A few minutes later, what appeared to be a trick-or-treater entered the restaurant wearing a black costume with a yellow mask and carrying a bag. This individual did not attract any immediate attention, as it was in fact Halloween night and the neighborhood was crawling with kids out looking for candy.

  The trick-or-treater moved quickly into the dining room and headed straight for Nicky Jr.’s table, swiftly removing a Mac 10 machine gun pistol from his candy bag, and started pumping bullets into Scarfo Jr.’s chest and neck, hitting him nine times in the process.

  As the gunman fled into the night, he symbolically dropped the Mac 10 outside of the restaurant, a nod perhaps to Al Pacino’s character, Michael Corleone, in The Godfather.

  Scarfo Jr. was bleeding and badly wounded, but he would survive.

  His father’s plan to run the beleaguered crime family from prison would not.

  When I heard what happened to my cousin, I immediately believed Chuckie’s son and Michael Ciancaglini were behind it. But there was nothing I could do about it. I tried to talk to my cousin in Otisville and warn him, but he didn’t listen. Instead, he listened to his father, and it almost got him killed. The whole thing made me sick. I knew my uncle was going absolutely bananas in Marion. When Nicky Jr. got shot, that was it—that was basically Philadelphia telling my uncle to go fuck himself.

  Immediately after being released from the hospital, where he spent nine days following the shooting, Nicky Scarfo Jr. left Philadelphia and sought refuge under the protection of the North Jersey branch of the Bruno–Scarfo La Cosa Nostra, staying for a few weeks at a Sheraton Hotel near the Newark airport, and then moving to another Sheraton Hotel in nearby Woodbridge.

  Nicky Jr.’s movements were carefully measured, he avoided South Philadelphia at all costs, and he only sporadically visited his mother and grandmother on Georgia Avenue in Atlantic City.

  The shooting sent a clear message: the Scarfo Era was over.

  But unfortunately for the man Leonetti and Scarfo Sr. both believed was the messenger, there would be little time to rejoice.

  In early January 1990, less than two months after the shooting at Dante and Luigi’s, Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino, the 28-year-old son of former Scarfo underboss Salvatore “Chuckie” Merlino and the man Leonetti believed was involved in the plot to kill Nicky Jr., was sentenced to more than two years in federal prison following a conviction for participating in a 1987 armored car heist that netted the aspiring young mob leader more than $350,000.

  Two weeks later, Santo “Big Santo” Idone, one of the last remaining pillars of the crumbling Scarfo organization, was convicted in federal court on racketeering charges, thanks in large part to the testimony of the federal government’s newest assassin: Philip “Crazy Phil” Leonetti.

  I never took any pleasure in testifying against anyone, but this is what I had to do to get away from La Cosa Nostra and break free of my uncle. When I testified against Santo, they flew me from El Paso to Philadelphia. They had me with so many armed US Marshals, you woulda thought I was the president. When I was done testifying, they flew me right back.

  Back in the Valachi Suite in La Tuna, Leonetti’s marathon debriefing sessions continued.

  A couple times a month a different group of agents or US attorneys would come down and ask me questions about La Cosa Nostra—the structure, the rules, who was who. Santo was the only made guy from our family that I testified against, but they used me against the Luccheses from North Jersey, the Taccetta brothers, Tumac and Tommy Ricciardi; they used me in Pittsburgh, New England, and in New York against four of the five families there.

  In the summer of 1990, Philip Leonetti would figure prominently in the federal government’s civil racketeering suit that resulted in a court-ordered takeover of Local 54, the casino union that Leonetti and his uncle, Nicodemo Scarfo, controlled during the early ’80s.

  Leonetti’s testimony formed a basis for the reasoning why several key Local 54 officials, who had once been aligned with the Scarfo mob, were removed from their positions.

  Back inside the Valachi Suite in La Tuna, Leonetti would watch helplessly as his prophecy regarding his cousin Nicky Jr. continued to be fulfilled, when on August 21, 1990, Nicky Scarfo Jr. was arrested, along with 30 other North Jersey–based mobsters, and charged with various racketeering offenses.

  The case against Nicky Jr. was built in large part on secretly recorded conversations between Scarfo Jr. and a North Jersey mobster named George Fresolone, who was one of the men assigned to protect the young mob scion following his October 1989 shooting.

  Unfortunately, for both Scarfo Sr. and Jr., Fresolone was cooperating with the New Jersey State Police and was wired for sound.

  I told the FBI that my uncle was gonna get my cousin killed or put in jail, and within 10 months of me saying that he gets shot nine times and indicted for racketeering because he’s hanging with a guy that we didn’t know, and the guy is wearing a wire. I mean, Jesus Christ, the writing was on the wall, but my uncle didn’t give a fuck, that’s how obsessed he was with the power of being the boss.

  But Little Nicky’s days as boss were coming to an end.

  In October 1990, less than two months after Nicky Jr. was indicted, Anthony “Cousin Tony” Piccolo, the 68-year-old caretaker street boss of his cousin Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo’s decimated crime family, was summoned to a meeting in North Jersey with Robert “Bobby Cabert” Bisaccia, the capo in charge of the Gambino family’s North Jersey operation. Bisaccia informed Piccolo that John Gotti and the Commission had decided to take “Little Nicky” down and replace him as boss of the Philadelphia–Atlantic City La Cosa Nostra with John Stanfa, the 50-year-old, Sicilian-born South Philadelphia–based mobster who drove Angelo Bruno home on that fateful night in March of 1980. Bisaccia informed Piccolo that he would be named S
tanfa’s consigliere.

  Those are the rules; New York always makes the boss. The Commission. They made Ange the boss; they made Phil Testa the boss; and they made my uncle the boss. So when they call Cousin Tony up and they tell him they are taking my uncle down and making John Stanfa the boss, that’s it. My uncle might not like it, I know he didn’t like it, but there is absolutely nothing he could do about it. Those are the rules.

  I think Gotti was pushing Stanfa in large part so that the Philadelphia proxy vote on the Commission would swing back to the Gambinos, like it had under Ange. I think by this time, the Chin had zero interest in my uncle or the Philly mob, especially with us losing Local 54 and with Bobby Manna in jail. Not to mention I had heard from one of the agents that when we all got locked up that the Gambinos and the Genovese chopped up most of North Jersey, leaving us, Philadelphia, with practically nothing.

  Remember, this is the same territory that the Commission gave to Caponigro in the ’70s, when him and Funzi Tieri were fighting over it, and it’s the reason why the Chin and his guys set Caponigro up and whacked him out—so they could take over more of North Jersey.

  Me and my uncle never really dealt with Stanfa. I think I met him maybe once or twice. I know that he was involved with Caponigro and Sindone when they hit Ange, and I know that he got very lucky that time he came to New York and the Genovese guys thought he was my uncle. Otherwise, he woulda ended up like Caponigro and Freddie Salerno. He disappeared for a while and then got locked up because he wouldn’t testify about what happened the night Ange got killed.

  The next time I heard anything about him was when me and my uncle went to Staten Island to meet Gotti and Gravano, and I remember Gotti asking my uncle if we would give Stanfa a pass and let him return to Philadelphia when he got out of jail. My uncle said, “I don’t have any problems with him as long he comes home and does the right thing and doesn’t cause any problems.”

  With Nicky Scarfo spending the rest of his life behind bars and now formally deposed as boss, Leonetti’s federal handlers turned their attention to a new target: the Dapper Don, John Gotti.

  In the fall of 1990, I spent a lot of time with the FBI and the US attorneys from the Eastern District of New York who were building a racketeering case against John Gotti and “Sammy the Bull” Gravano. I remember one of the agents from New York saying to me, “You are the highest-ranking member of La Cosa Nostra to ever cooperate; did you know that?” And I told him that I did not. They told me that they wanted to bring the indictment against Gotti by the end of the year and that when the case went to trial, I was going to be one of their main witnesses, based upon all of the things that me and Sammy had done together, different things he had told me, and, most importantly, the meeting me and my uncle attended on Staten Island with John and Sammy in 1986 where John laid out the details on the Castellano hit. They put me in front of a grand jury, and I testified about both John Gotti and “Sammy the Bull” Gravano. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone; all I did was tell the truth. It was all business, nothing personal.

  On December 11, 1990, armed with a RICO indictment that charged five murders, including the hit on Paul Castellano, a swarm of FBI agents and New York City police detectives raided the Ravenite Social Club in Manhattan and arrested John Gotti, his underboss, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, and his consigliere, Frank “Frankie Loc” Locascio. All three men would be held without bail while awaiting trial. The indictment was based, in large part, on intelligence culled during debriefing sessions with Philip Leonetti in the Valachi Suite and from his top secret testimony before a New York grand jury.

  By this point, I had been in La Tuna for more than a year. You gotta remember, even though I was in the Valachi Suite—which beat bein’ in a regular cell—I was all by myself, with the exception of the guards who watched me and the agents and prosecutors who came to debrief me. I told Jim Maher and Gary Langan, “You gotta get me out of here. I’m going stir crazy being in here by myself. Put me in Wit Sec somewhere, anywhere, but I gotta get outta this Valachi Suite.”

  On the Road Again

  In early 1991, they moved me from La Tuna into the Wit Sec unit at FCI Phoenix out in Arizona. This place was about 25 miles outside of Phoenix, smack dab in the middle of nowhere, all the way out in the desert, and was surrounded by what they called the Black Canyon Mountains. I thought the sun was hot in La Tuna, my God, that sun in Arizona, some of the guys would cook things right on the asphalt, that’s how hot it was out there.

  In 1991, Philip Leonetti was arguably the most significant federally protected witness in the United States. Now housed with approximately 70 other protected witnesses, Leonetti had to settle into his new home.

  I liked it there. I played basketball every day out in the sun. I ran five miles every day on the track. I was in absolute tip-top shape, and the view of the desert and those mountains was amazing. There were a lot of Mexican guys down there, guys from the Mexican Mafia, but everyone kept to themselves and it was easy doing time there.

  Now when you’re in Wit Sec, they don’t use your name, only your initials, but eventually everyone knows who you are and what you are there for. One day, I get done playing basketball and this kid comes up to me and says, “Aren’t you Philip Leonetti, Nicky Scarfo’s nephew?” And I say, “Who are you?” And he says, “My name is Willard Moran, but everyone calls me Junior.” I remember thinking to myself, “Jesus Christ, what a small world.” This is the kid they said whacked out John McCullough, the union boss, and I had never met him a day in my life, and here we are, eleven years later in the same unit in a prison in Arizona. He was a good kid. I got to know him, and I grew to like him.

  A few months later, I’m walking the track and I see this guy coming towards me, making a beeline for me. Don’t forget, I’m still in jail with a bunch of killers, so my antenna is always up. The guy gets closer and I think he could tell I had a defensive posture, and he says, “Philip, don’t you recognize me? It’s me, Gino Milano.”

  Now Gino was one of Salvie’s top guys—it was him and Joey Punge. Gino was on trial with us in the RICO case, and then he flipped before the Flowers case and he testified in that case against my uncle and everybody, including his own brother, Nicky Whip.

  So, me and Gino catch up and he tells me that he was in prison for a while in Minnesota with Lawrence, and he tells me what was going on in there with him. He’s telling me about the Flowers trial, bringing me up to speed on a lot of stuff, but never once did either of us mention Salvie. I think he knows it bothered me as much as it bothered him. It was like Salvie and all that stuff was in a different life. It’s hard to explain. Both of us were out here doing our time hoping that when we got resentenced, we’d get better deals and we could go home. Don’t forget, we were both young. I was 38 at the time, and Gino was 32.

  Prosecutors in New York would call Leonetti as a witness in the infamous Windows Case, which featured mobsters from several New York crime families, including Peter Gotti and Venero “Benny Eggs” Mangano, the underboss of the Genovese family who Leonetti played cards with while his uncle met with Vincent “The Chin” Gigante on the day that Scarfo was formally named boss of the Philadelphia–Atlantic City La Cosa Nostra.

  As Leonetti was growing accustomed to life inside FCI Phoenix, his mother, Maria, and Little Philip decided to leave the Poconos and relocate to a small town near Tampa, Florida.

  Now that I was out of La Tuna, I had better communication with my family and I knew that they were doing really good. Maria got a good job, and Little Philip was doing well in school. I learned that my mom was secretly calling my grandmother back in Atlantic City, and that she was doing okay, but that she was having some minor health problems and that my uncle was torturing her from jail, which didn’t surprise me. He tortured everybody that came in contact with him. Around this time is when the feds started asking me questions about Bobby Simone.

  At 56 years old, Robert “Bobby” Simone was widely regarded as Philadelphia’s most
prominent criminal defense attorney. His client dossier read like a who’s who of the Philadelphia mob elite of the ’70s and ’80s: Angelo Bruno, Philip Testa, Salvie Testa, Frank “Chickie” Narducci, Frank Sindone, and Joseph “Chickie” Ciancaglini.

  But Simone became best known as Nicky Scarfo’s attorney of choice following Simone’s performance in the Vincent Falcone murder trial, which resulted in an acquittal for Scarfo, Leonetti, and Simone’s client at the time, Lawrence Merlino.

  I’ve seen a lot of lawyers throughout the years and, by far, Bobby was the best. He had this way about him that made it tough not like him—unless you were a judge or a prosecutor—and juries fuckin’ loved him, especially the women. He kind of looked like Phil Donahue.

  My uncle loved Bobby, and so did I, and even though he wasn’t formally a part of La Cosa Nostra, we always treated him like he was one of us, which he was.

  And that was Bobby Simone’s problem.

  Dogged for years by federal prosecutors on charges ranging from tax evasion to racketeering, Simone found himself in the exact same situation as all of those clients he had represented throughout the years—under indictment and facing years in prison.

  I did everything I could not to hurt Bobby in those debriefing sessions, but the deal was if I got caught lying about anything, I was done. So I had to tell the truth. All those years I was in La Cosa Nostra, I followed the rules. Now when I’m out of the mob and cooperating with the government, I was following their rules.

  As federal prosecutors in Philadelphia built their case against Simone, federal prosecutors in New York scored a major victory: they flipped John Gotti’s underboss, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, the No. 2 man in the Gambino crime family, and Leonetti’s close friend.