Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family

by Phil Leonetti

  With our bail, we couldn’t go to Philadelphia either. Chuckie and Salvie were coming down from Philly a few times a week to see us and let us know what was going on, but they didn’t know anything about Caponigro or Bobby Manna; all they knew was the stuff in South Philly. So at the time, we were basically stuck in Atlantic City and out of the loop of what was really going on. My uncle said, “We’re gonna let things play out and see what happens with Lefty,” meaning Ange, “And we’re gonna lay low for a while and get ready for this trial. If we don’t win this trial nothing else matters because we’re dead.”

  At the time, I was busy with Scarf, Inc. and Lawrence was busy with Nat Nat, his rod company. My uncle was meeting a lot with Harold, going over the discovery in the Falcone case with the lawyers.

  Meanwhile, up in North Jersey, Antonio “Tony Bananas” Caponigro, the consigliere of the Bruno crime family, was doing everything but lying low; he was planning to assassinate his boss, longtime Philadelphia mob don Angelo Bruno and take over the family.

  The Chicago-born Caponigro earned his nickname, Tony Bananas, from his early days in the underworld, when he ran a profitable sports book and juice loan operation out of a produce market in the Down Neck section of Newark.

  As 1979 turned to 1980, he was the head of a growing intrafamily movement that opposed the old-school Bruno’s strict opposition to allowing mobsters to engage in the extremely lucrative distribution of narcotics and his continued resistance to exploit the family’s Atlantic City operation beyond the traditional street rackets, which at the time consisted primarily of gambling, loan sharking, and extortion under the careful watch of Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, who ran Atlantic City, much like Caponigro ran North Jersey.

  In the months prior to his death, Angelo Bruno had all but lost control of the crime family he had led for the previous two decades.

  Bruno and his longtime underboss, Philip “Chicken Man” Testa, were feuding over money and power and not speaking with one another. Bruno was involved in a dispute over control of the Atlantic City casino unions with Nicky Scarfo, whom he had unsuccessfully tried to turn against Testa a few months prior.

  And unbeknownst to the boss, the biggest threat came from Antonio “Tony Bananas” Caponigro, his trusted consigliere, who seemed to revel in the backstabbing politics and ruthless violence of mob life that Bruno had shunned for two decades.

  The ambitious and treacherous Caponigro had started flirting with the idea of killing Bruno sometime around the summer of 1979 after a series of clandestine mob sit-down’s with Frank “Funzi” Tieri, the powerful Genovese gangster who Caponigro thought had given him the green light to kill Bruno by telling him, “Our friends on the Commission said do what you gotta do.”

  For more than two decades, beginning in 1959, Bruno ran the Philly mob like a business, not like a gangster. He was considered a racketeer, and was dubbed the Docile Don by the local media. While the manner in which he ruled the underworld may have been docile, the manner in which he was about to die was not.

  The bespectacled, soft-spoken Bruno was known as Ange to those who knew him well and Mr. Bruno to those who didn’t. At around 10:30 p.m. on March 21, 1980, Bruno was sitting in the front passenger seat of a Chevy Caprice being driven by a young Sicilian-born mob associate named John Stanfa.

  Bruno’s normal driver, his trusted aide Raymond “Long John” Martorano, had conspicuously made himself unavailable a short time earlier when it was time to drive the don home from a dinner meeting with subordinates at a popular South Philadelphia restaurant named Cous’ Little Italy, which was owned by one of Bruno’s capos, a siggy named Frank Sindone, and had previously been the site of Piccolo’s 500 Club, which had been owned by Nicky Scarfo’s uncles, the Piccolo brothers.

  Over the last few months, Sindone, who was known as the Barracuda, had become close with Antonio “Tony Bananas” Caponigro. Sindone, who ran a very large gambling and loan sharking operation in South Philadelphia, seemed to share Caponigro’s belief that Bruno was no longer the best fit to run the family.

  Bruno was not aware of any of this as he accepted a kiss on the cheek from Sindone as he was leaving Cous’ Little Italy that night. Some underworld observers believe that Sindone had purposely marked Bruno with the kiss of death.

  As the Stanfa-driven Caprice approached Bruno’s home, which sat at the corner of Ninth and Snyder in the heart of South Philadelphia, Bruno had no idea he was living the final seconds of his life. Waiting in the shadows with a sawed-off shotgun under his trench coat was Bruno’s executioner, Antonio “Tony Bananas” Caponigro, the power-hungry and treacherous North Jersey mob leader who was Bruno’s consigliere and had set in motion the palace coup to remove Bruno from power.

  It was all about greed and treason, which was the Sicilian calling card, according to Nicky Scarfo.

  As Stanfa pulled the car to the curb, he lowered the front passenger window so that Bruno could flick his cigarette into the gutter. As he did, Caponigro emerged from the shadows, removed the sawed-off shotgun from under his trench coat, aimed it square at the back of Bruno’s head, and fired from close range.

  The blast instantly killed the 69-year-old mob don.

  Things would never be the same in the Philadelphia mob.

  On the night that Ange got killed, I was at Caesars with the Blade. We had just finished eating dinner and we were downstairs in the lobby getting ready to leave. As we were leaving, we bumped into Sal Avena, who was Ange’s longtime lawyer.

  So Sal is making small talk with me about the Falcone case when all the sudden some guy he was with comes running up to him and says, “Oh, my God, they killed Ange. It’s on TV. They shot him outside his home. He’s dead.”

  Now Sal Avena is going nuts. He’s saying, “Oh, my God, oh, my God.” Me and the Blade tried to calm him down, but he was very upset. He and Ange were very close.

  So me and the Blade leave Caesars and we are walking back to Georgia Avenue, which is a few blocks away. Now, as we are walking home, a black cat runs in front of us and the Blade goes nuts—he’s very superstitious. He tells me, “First, Ange gets killed, and now this,” meaning the cat. He says, “Come on, Philip, we gotta walk a different way to undo the bad luck from the cat.” There was no arguing with him—he was dead serious. Here’s this guy who is a stone-cold killer and he’s spooked by this stupid black cat.

  So we walk a few blocks out of our way until the Blade thinks we have undone the curse and we make it to Georgia Avenue. I go right up to my uncle’s apartment and I ask him if he heard the big news. He was sitting on the couch reading a newspaper with his reading glasses on.

  He put the paper down, took off his glasses, and motioned for me to follow him outside.

  When we got outside he said, “What’s the big news? What’s going on?” So I tell him, “Ange is dead. He got shot outside his home.”

  My uncle made a face like he was he was both happy and surprised, and we went into the Scarf, Inc. office and watched what was going on, on TV. It was live on TV, all the Philly stations were carrying it.

  A little while later Lawrence comes to the office and says he spoke to Chuckie, who was in South Philadelphia, and that everyone down there is going nuts trying to figure out what happened.

  Chuckie also sent word that Phil Testa was sending Salvie down first thing in the morning with a message for my uncle.

  Now, at the time, we couldn’t leave Atlantic County because of our bail and Phil Testa couldn’t come to New Jersey because the same SCI that had sent my uncle to Yardville wanted to give him a subpoena to testify. If he had gotten served he wouldn’t have testified and he woulda wound up sitting in jail like my uncle and Ange when they went to Yardville.

  So everything was being done through messengers.

  The morning after the most sensational gangland killing in the history of the Philadelphia La Cosa Nostra, the heinous picture of the slain godfather’s corpse, his mouth agape and missing most of his cranium, was splashed ac
ross newspaper front pages throughout the world and has since become an iconic image of crime in the 20th century, used in hundreds of print and television gangland retrospectives over the last three decades.

  First thing in the morning, like clockwork here comes Salvie. It’s like seven-thirty in the morning and he’s by himself. Me, him and my uncle take a walk up Georgia Avenue towards Atlantic. There was a little coffee shop there that we used to go to called the Cup and Saucer.

  While we’re walking, Salvie says to my uncle, “My dad needs you to go to New York and find out what’s going on. Nobody knows nothin’. No one knows who did it and no one knows who’s in charge. It’s chaos out there.”

  My uncle says, “I’ll see what I can do, but we can’t leave Atlantic City because of our bail restrictions, and these cocksuckers watch us all day. They don’t let up.”

  As we’re eating our breakfast, my uncle pulls me aside and tells me to call Harold Garber and to have him meet us on Georgia Avenue. So I excuse myself and I call Harold and give him the message and he says he’ll be there in 20 minutes.

  As we’re walking back, my uncle says to Salvie, “Tell your father he’s in charge, he’s the underboss. That’s the way it works in this thing, in La Cosa Nostra, and don’t let nobody tell him any different.” My uncle says, “You make sure you guys are careful, watch out for this,” and he shapes his finger like a gun, “because this plot may not be over.” He says, “Give me a few days and I’ll find out what is going on from my friends in New York.”

  Salvie says good-bye and he drives off as Harold is pulling up.

  My uncle says to Harold, “I need to go to North Jersey tomorrow I need you to make it happen.” Harold says, “Nick, you can’t go to North Jersey; you can’t leave Atlantic County—you know that.” My uncle cuts him off and says, “Find a way, Harold, work your magic, but I need to be in North Jersey tomorrow.”

  That morning, Scarfo’s lawyer, Harold Garber, filed an emergency motion with the judge in the Falcone case seeking permission for Nicodemo Scarfo to travel from Atlantic City to Newark to meet with a criminal defense attorney he wanted to interview regarding the possibility of adding him to the defense team for the Falcone case.

  So later that day Harold calls and he tells my uncle he’s all set. He can go to Newark and meet with the lawyer the next day at 1:00 p.m.

  Harold had a lawyer friend in Newark and this guy gave Harold the okay to let my uncle use his office for the meeting.

  Now my uncle wants to get word to Bobby Manna that he wants to meet him, but my uncle didn’t use telephones and neither did Bobby Manna. Normally we’d get word to Bobby using Blackie Napoli, but my uncle didn’t want any of the North Jersey guys to know that he was coming up there, and even though my uncle and Blackie were tight, Blackie was Caponigro’s right-hand man.

  So my uncle has Lawrence call Chuckie and tell him that my uncle needs to see him right away in Atlantic City. An hour later, here comes Chuckie.

  My uncle tells him, “I need you to go to New York and get word to Bobby Manna that I need a sit-down with him tomorrow.” And he gives Chuckie the address to the lawyer’s office in Newark, and on the paper it says 1:00 p.m.

  Now Chuckie doesn’t know these guys in New York like we do, but Bobby knew Chuckie and that he was with my uncle. So Chuckie leaves Atlantic City and goes to New York, to Greenwich Village, where my uncle told him to go.

  I think it was a bakery. Chuckie leaves the message with the guy at the bakery and turns around and drives back to Atlantic City. He never sees Bobby, but this is how it was done.

  So me, my uncle, Chuckie and Lawrence go for an early dinner at Angeloni’s. This is the day after Ange is killed. All this happens within a few hours—the meeting with Salvie, Chuckie going to New York—and we start hearing bits and pieces about what happened. We knew that John Stanfa was the driver, and my uncle tells us at dinner, “I think the guy in North Jersey,” meaning Caponigro, “and the Barracuda,” meaning Sindone, “have something to do with this, and if I’m right, they have a few more names on their list,” meaning Phil Testa, Chickie Narducci, and maybe even my uncle.

  My uncle says, “Tomorrow when I meet with Bobby I’ll find out exactly what’s going on.”

  Chuckie says, “Nick, you want me to ride up with you? I mean, Christ, you could be walking into an ambush.”

  My uncle said, “Nothing’s gonna happen to me. Bobby is with us. I’ll be fine.”

  The next day my uncle is up early and he is showered and shaved and he is wearing a suit and heads up to Newark by himself. We had a black Cadillac at the time and that’s the car that he drove. The night before I parked it a few blocks away so that he could sneak away on foot and get in the car without being picked up by any surveillance.

  Now I’m in the Scarf, Inc. office all day and it seems like everyone and their brother are stopping in. Lawrence was there, the Blade was there, Chuckie and his son came down. Harold came by. Saul Kane was hanging around. Everyone was anxious, worried about my uncle going up there alone and also anxious at what Bobby Manna was going to tell him.

  So around 4:00 p.m. the office phone rings; my cousin Chris answers it and hands it to me and says, “It’s my dad.”

  I get on and he’s talking to me in code. He says, “I’m gonna lie down and get some rest, call and wake me in about two hours,” which meant he would be back in Atlantic City in two hours. Then he said, “I’m starting to feel a lot better, ever since I saw the doctor,” which meant everything went well with Bobby Manna. Then he said, “If I’m feeling better, I want to have dinner with my friend tonight. Set it up.” I knew by that he meant he wanted to have dinner with Phil Testa. Everything was always in code with my uncle; he constantly talked in circles. Sometimes Chuckie or the Blade would say, “You’re losing me, Nick,” which always made me laugh, but I was able to follow everything he was saying. I know what he was going to say before he said it, that’s how well I knew him.

  So I hang up and I clear the office out. I tell Chuckie that we need to get word to Salvie in Philadelphia and tell him that my uncle wants to see him and his father for dinner in Atlantic City. Chuckie says, “No problem.”

  So around six-thirty, seven, my uncle pulls up and maybe 20 minutes later here comes Salvie. He had already dropped his father off at the restaurant to avoid us all being seen.

  We went to Scannicchio’s and Vince sat us in the back and made sure that no one was seated around us, where we were was very private, secluded.

  It was me, my uncle, Chuckie, Lawrence, Salvie, and Phil Testa.

  My uncle starts off by saying, “It was North Jersey, Tony Bananas and his crew. Tony’s making a play to take over the family and the Barracuda is with him.”

  Phil Testa just shook his head, said something in Italian and slammed his fist into the table and then said, “Okay, Nick, so what happens next?”

  My uncle said, “Let New York get to the bottom of this plot and figure out what they’re gonna do about it, but in the meantime you step up. You were the underboss and you become the acting boss, and we sit back and wait for New York.”

  Phil Testa proposed a toast to Ange’s memory, and we all toasted, and then my uncle proposed a toast to the future, and we all toasted to that as well.

  While we were eating, Phil Testa said, “If I get straightened out with this thing,” meaning if New York made him the boss, “you guys are all gonna get made,”meaning me, Chuckie, Salvie, and Lawrence.

  And then we toasted to that.

  While Scarfo, Leonetti, the Testas, and the Merlino brothers were busy toasting the past, present, and future at Scannicchio’s, Antonio Caponigro and his crew were toasting to a very different future at Caponigro’s club in Newark, the 311 Club.

  That toast saw Tony Bananas as the new don and the Barracuda, Frank Sindone, as his underboss.

  See Caponigro thought that he had the okay to kill Ange. When he went to Funzi Tieri, Tieri told him that he had gotten the okay from the Comm
ission, but Tieri never presented it to the Commission; they would have never sanctioned it.

  For one, Ange was close with Paul Castellano, who had the top seat on the Commission, and two, our family was aligned with the Gambinos. If Funzi Tieri, who is with the Genovese, comes to the Commission and says, “Tony Bananas wants to kill Angelo Bruno,” Castellano would have known it was designed to empower the Genovese, and Castellano wasn’t stupid.

  But apparently Antonio “Tony Bananas” Caponigro was.

  So when Caponigro is talking to Funzi Tieri about killing Ange, he thinks he’s talking to the boss, because everyone thought that Tieri was the boss, but he wasn’t. The Chin was.

  So Tieri strokes Caponigro along and all the while, Tieri, the Chin, and Bobby Manna are manipulating the whole thing. They want Ange dead so that my uncle gets the union, which benefits them. They also want Ange dead so that Philadelphia’s Commission vote now goes with the Genovese and not the Gambinos, which benefits them, and on top of it, they want Caponigro dead so they can take his gambling and loan sharking operation, which is worth several million, which also benefits them.

  A few years before all this, there was a beef between Caponigro and Funzi Tieri over a North Jersey bookmaking operation that Caponigro controlled, but Tieri was trying to move in on.

  They took the dispute to the Commission and Ange backed Caponigro and since the Gambinos had the votes and we were with the Gambinos, the Commission voted in favor of Caponigro instead of Tieri.

  While the ambitious Caponigro double-crossed Bruno, the ruthless old-school Brooklyn-bred gangster Tieri triple-crossed Caponigro.