At 32 years old, Philip Leonetti became the youngest underboss in the modern-day history of La Cosa Nostra. He was the No. 2 man behind his uncle, Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, one of the most powerful Mafia dons in the United States, and he couldn’t have been less happy about it.
I was numb; I didn’t have a feeling one way or the other. By this time I was so sick of my uncle and all of his treachery that I didn’t even want to be around him anymore, let alone be involved in La Cosa Nostra. That’s how bad it had become.
Following the murder of Salvie Testa and his uncle’s betrayal of Nick “the Blade” Virgilio and the Merlino brothers, Philip Leonetti had seen enough to believe that eventually his uncle would turn on him.
If we had made it a few more years, he would have turned on me and tried to have me killed, I have no doubt in my mind about it.
One time, my uncle and Nicky Jr. got into an argument and Nicky Jr. was talking fresh to my uncle. I was right there, but I didn’t say a word. When Nicky Jr. left, my uncle turned to me and started hollering, “You need to teach him that he can’t talk to me like that,” and I still didn’t say anything. Very quickly my uncle’s colors change and he says to me, like he just figured out the answer to his own question, “I see what it is—you want him to get in trouble. You want me and him to be at odds. I see what it is with you.” This is how sick he was. In his mind, he thought I wanted him and Nicky Jr. to argue and to fight because it would be better for me, which was the last thing on my mind.
As Leonetti began to settle into his new position as underboss, Scarfo placed the relatively inexperienced duo of Francis “Faffy” Iannarella and Tommy DelGiorno in charge of the family’s street operation in Philadelphia and entrusted them with delivering the news to the Merlino brothers that they had been taken down.
My uncle said to me, in a very aggressive tone, “If I have to see either one of them guys,” meaning Chuckie or Lawrence, “if either one of them try and come down here and see me, I am ordering you to kill them on the spot. And that is a direct order from me to you. I’m not your uncle saying this, I am your boss in La Cosa Nostra. If you don’t want to see them dead, tell them to stay the fuck in Philadelphia and clean their acts up.”
It was as if my uncle was saying that he spared their lives because I had spoken against it, but he was warning me that they were on very thin ice.
The very next day I get a call in the office from Chuckie. He says, “Philip, what’s going on? He took us down and now he won’t see me.” I told him, I said, “Chuck, just stay in Philadelphia, be with your family, go do your sentence, and everything will be okay.” And he said, “What did I do? I didn’t do anything. I just want to come down and talk to him and straighten things out before I go to jail.” And I said, “Chuck, please don’t come here, please don’t. Be with your family, go to jail, and everything is going to be okay, but please, do not come here, Chuck. I’m begging you.”
Salvatore “Chuckie” Merlino had been around Nicky Scarfo for over 30 years and he knew by the tone of Philip Leonetti’s voice in imploring him not to come to Atlantic City that Leonetti was warning him of Scarfo’s desire to kill him if he did.
Merlino spent the next few weeks in South Philadelphia, and then turned himself in a few weeks later on February 21, 1986, to begin serving his four-year prison sentence.
His brother Lawrence apparently got the memo, too, and avoided Scarfo, Leonetti, and Georgia Avenue at all costs.
I didn’t save Chuckie and Lawrence’s life with that call, I saved my uncle’s. Because there was no way I was killing either one of them, and if push came to shove, I was going to kill my uncle. I was absolutely disgusted with him. Because at that point, if I had disobeyed his direct order to me to kill either one of them, he would have had me killed, and then he would have killed them. That’s how bad things were at this time. We weren’t a family anymore.
The Scarfo mob, which had thrived with Chuckie Merlino as underboss and Salvie Testa as street boss, was no longer.
Testa had been murdered on Scarfo’s orders, and Chuckie Merlino was behind bars and stripped of his rank.
Nicholas “Nick the Crow” Caramandi was a solider in the Scarfo mob, a made man following his participation in the 1983 murder of Pat Spirito.
The Crow was a con artist, a flimflammer. He wasn’t a gangster, but he always had some scheme goin’—and once in a while, whatever he was doing would hit pretty big and we would make a lot of money, so my uncle kind of tolerated him.
He started to get involved in Philadelphia, shaking down construction companies so they could get their projects done without any interference. You have to understand that all the unions were under our control and we could shut projects down with a phone call, so these guys would pay us so that we wouldn’t bother them.
Around this time Caramandi became acquainted with a Philadelphia city councilman from South Philadelphia named Leland Beloff and Beloff’s aide Robert Rego.
We knew Leland Beloff He came every year to our Christmas party and always paid his respects to my uncle if we saw him out somewhere. In turn, we would have the unions support him during his elections and he would do little favors for us from time to time.
So as the Crow starts getting more involved with the construction stuff, he comes into contact with Beloff, who as councilman had a lot of influence over what projects would go forward and what projects would not. So one day, the Crow comes down to see my uncle and he asks for permission to start doing business deals with Beloff, and my uncle gives him the okay, but says, “Be careful. Use your head.”
In April 1986, Nicodemo Scarfo and Philip Leonetti were the boss and underboss of the Philadelphia–Atlantic City mob. Scarfo was 57 years old and Leonetti was just 33.
As they tried to reshuffle their own family hierarchy following numerous deaths, demotions, and incarcerations, the New York Families were going through the same type of bloodletting that Philadelphia had gone through in the early 1980s following the deaths of Angelo Bruno and Philip Testa.
After Paul Castellano got killed in New York, John Gotti became the boss of the Gambino family, and he made Frankie DeCicco his underboss and he named Sammy the Bull his No. 3, his consigliere. This was their new administration. Even though our family was aligned with the Genovese, with the Chin, and Bobby Manna, we always had a working relationship with the Gambinos, the Luccheses, the Colombos, and the Bonnanos, who were the other Families in New York.
But what happened was, the Chin had a strong relationship with Paul Castellano, in the sense that, while they weren’t the best of friends, they didn’t get in each other’s way and they would help one another from time to time. When Gotti killed Castellano, the Chin decided to kill Gotti in retaliation and made a pact with the Luccheses and their boss, Vic Amuso, that they were going to kill Gotti and put another guy in there to run the Gambinos so that they would be able to control the family, using the new boss as their puppet. This would avenge Paul Castellano’s death and make the Chin even stronger, because he would essentially control both the Genovese and Gambino Families and have absolute control over the Commission, and it would have made Vic Amuso and the Luccheses the second most powerful family in New York behind Chin’s. The Chin hated John Gotti and wanted to eliminate him at all costs.
On April 13, 1986, a low-level Genovese associate walked toward a parked car outside of the Veteran & Friends Social Club in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn. Very casually, he placed a bag containing a powerful homemade bomb underneath the car.
Inside the club, new Gambino boss John Gotti, his underboss, Frankie DeCicco, and his consigliere, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, were scheduled to attend a meeting, and when the meeting was done, the men were supposed to drive back to Gotti’s headquarters, the Ravenite Social Club in the Little Italy section of Lower Manhattan.
Gotti’s would-be bomber sat in a parked car just up the street with a full view of the Veteran & Friends Social Club and the car with the b
ag of explosives under it that belonged to Frankie DeCicco.
The hit planned for Gotti and DeCicco was eerily similar to the bombing death of Philip Testa in March 1981.
As DeCicco and another man believed to be Gotti approached the car, the bomb was detonated, killing DeCicco instantly and wounding the other man, who turned out not to be John Gotti.
The Chin’s plan had failed and now Gotti and the Gambinos were on high alert.
My uncle and I had been told by Bobby Manna that John Gotti did in fact get the Commission’s permission to kill Paul Castellano, but I didn’t believe it and it never made any sense to me. I think Bobby told us that because the Chin never wanted to be connected to the killing of Frankie DeCicco and the attempted killing of John Gotti. By telling us that Gotti had gotten the okay, it took suspicion away from the Chin being involved in the bombing. They used the bomb to make it look like the siggys did it because they were close to Castellano. The use of explosive devices was against the rules of La Cosa Nostra. I remember thinking to myself: this fuckin’ Chin ain’t so crazy; he’s the shrewdest of them all, and the most deadly.
Another person who told both Scarfo and Leonetti that John Gotti had gotten permission from the Commission to murder Paul Castellano was Gotti himself.
A month or so after Frankie DeCicco got killed, my uncle and I went up to a house on Staten Island belonging to Sammy the Bull’s brother-in-law, and Sammy the Bull formally introduced us to John Gotti as the boss of the Gambino family. After DeCicco got killed, Sammy became the underboss. Gotti said to my uncle, “Nick, I wanted you to know that I got the okay and I did this thing right,” and my uncle said, “I’m sure you did, John.”
For the next several hours, the bosses and underbosses of the Gambino crime family and the Bruno–Scarfo crime family got acquainted with one another over drinks and a homemade Italian feast.
It was just the four of us. Gotti and my uncle talked about how similar Ange and Castellano were, in the sense that were racketeers and not gangsters, which is exactly what me and Sammy had said all along.
After a while, Gotti said to me, “My friend Sammy here has told me a lot about you,” and then he said to my uncle, “Your nephew here has quite a reputation for such a young man.” My uncle said, “He’s been with me since he was a boy and he knows this thing as well as I do.” Gotti said, “You did good with him. You should be proud to call him your nephew and underboss. We need more young men like him in La Cosa Nostra. But these young kids today, this generation, they’re not like us, Nick. There’s no one left to teach them the rules and show them the parameters of what this thing is all about.”
Gotti spoke very fondly of his mentor, Aniello Dellacroce, and my uncle talked the same way about Skinny Razor, and you could tell that Gotti felt the same way about La Cosa Nostra that my uncle did. All in all, it was a great meeting.
When we got back to Atlantic City, my uncle said of Gotti, “He’s sharp. I now know why our friend,” and he stroked his chin, meaning Gigante, “doesn’t like him.”
The Beginning of the End
THE RULES AND PARAMETERS THAT GOTTI SPOKE OF INCLUDED ONE EDICT THAT MEMBERS OF LA COSA NOSTRA ROUTINELY IGNORED: THE PROHIBITION AGAINST PARTICIPATING IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF NARCOTICS.
Dealing drugs was an absolute violation of the rules. Plain and simple. My uncle and I were 100 percent against anyone who sold drugs or used drugs. When my uncle became boss, he brought everyone in and told them the rules.
A few days after that meeting, Raymond “Long John” Martorano asked to meet with my uncle, and I arranged for them to meet. Long John said, “Nick I just want to make sure we are on the same page regarding the policy on drugs,” and my uncle said, “I don’t understand what you’re asking,” and Long John said, “Ange had the same policy, but he and I were heavily involved in the drug trade. We made a lot of money selling drugs together.”
My uncle and I were both shocked, and my uncle said, “You and Ange sold drugs together?” and Long John said, “Nick, the entire time Ange was boss, he was the biggest drug dealer in Philadelphia. Him, Phil Testa, and Caponigro, that’s where they made most of their money.”
My uncle changed his tone and said very seriously, “Raymond, listen to me. If anyone in this family is involved with drugs from this day forward and I find out about it, it’s this,” and he made the sign of the gun.
By the summer of 1986, various members of the Scarfo organization had successfully circumvented the edict against being involved with the distribution of drugs by shaking down drug dealers and loaning them money, which in essence, financed their operations.
My uncle said it was okay to shake down the drug dealers with the street tax and it was okay to lend them money with our loan sharking operation, but we were forbidden from getting directly involved with what they were doing.
Many La Cosa Nostra bosses—like Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, and even Vincent “The Chin” Gigante—had been convicted of dealing heroin in their younger days, and black drug dealers were making piles of money selling cocaine in the 1980s. Several members of the Scarfo organization became directly and indirectly involved in the manufacturing and distribution of methamphetamine—more commonly known as “meth” or “crank” or “speed”—by obtaining and reselling phenyl-2-propanone (P2P) to “cookers” who used P2P oil to make meth.
A gallon of P2P could be obtained overseas for under $2,000 and resold to dealers in the United States for $20,000, or more.
It was an offer that some in the Scarfo mob couldn’t refuse.
The first sign of trouble came when Saul Kane got indicted for labor racketeering with Stevie Traitz and the roofers union, and then got indicted on a federal drug case, which was nonsense. Saul told me he never sold drugs a day in his life, and I believe him to this day.
The feds alleged that Kane, who was 51 at the time, was the leader of an international drug operation that specialized in importing P2P into the United States, and then wholesaling it to various drug operations. The indictment alleged that the operation made an excess of $24 million. Almost as quickly as Saul Kane and several of his top associates were rounded up, one of them began cooperating, and Kane was held without bail.
Several other alleged Philadelphia meth dealers were rounded up in separate indictments that charged them with importing P2P and distributing meth, and shortly after they were charged, several of these individuals began to cooperate and point the finger at various made members of the Scarfo mob, including Ralph “Junior” Staino, Charles “Charlie White” Iannece, Thomas “Tommy Del” DelGiorno, and Nicholas “Nicky Crow” Caramandi, as being directly or indirectly involved in importing, manufacturing, and distributing both P2P and methamphetamine.
Indictments were being prepared, but for tactical reasons they were kept under seal.
In addition to his involvement in the P2P case, Nicholas “Nick the Crow” Caramandi had not heeded Nicky Scarfo’s warning about “being careful” in his dealings with Philadelphia City councilman Leland Beloff. The Crow was caught trying to extort $1 million from a prominent Philadelphia land developer, using and mentioning his connections to both Leland Beloff and Nicky Scarfo in his dealings with a representative for the developer, who was actually an undercover FBI agent.
On June 27, 1986, Caramandi was arrested, but 11 days later the charges against him were dropped.
The Crow comes down to Atlantic City to see my uncle and tells him that the case is bullshit and that’s why the feds dropped the charges. But my uncle spoke to Bobby Simone and Bobby told him that he thought the feds were going to reindict the case down the road and that their ultimate goal was to include my uncle in the indictment, even though my uncle never met the developer or the undercover agent. My uncle didn’t seem to be too concerned about it and neither was I.
Another problem Nicky Scarfo was having at the time was with Tommy DelGiorno, one of the men supervising his mob’s street operation in South Philadelphia.
The same thing
that had happened towards the end with Chuckie was happening with Tommy Del. He was drunk seven days a week and my uncle took him down, just like he did to Chuckie. My uncle said to me, “We gotta get this thing back on track, from top to bottom.”He knew that our organization was in bad shape.
What Scarfo had no way of knowing at that time was exactly how bad things actually were.
With Tommy DelGiorno taken down from captain to solider, the 39-year-old Francis “Faffy” Iannarella became the family’s new Philadelphia street boss.
There was just a sense that things were falling apart around us. It’s hard to explain, but the regime just wasn’t the same. After Salvie got killed, and then the thing with Chuckie and Lawrence, it just kept going downhill from there.
And things were about to go from bad to worse.
US v. Nicodemo Scarfo,
Philip Leonetti, et al.
IN OCTOBER 1986, NICHOLAS “NICK THE CROW” CARAMANDI WAS REARRESTED IN THE EXTORTION CASE INVOLVING WILLARD ROUSE, THE REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER HE TRIED TO SHAKE DOWN FOR A MILLION DOLLARS. HE WAS HELD IN A PHILADELPHIA PRISON WITHOUT BAIL.
At Caramandi’s bail hearing, the US attorney laid out for the judge the government’s belief that Caramandi was a career criminal and made member of the Scarfo mob, while also claiming that Caramandi figured prominently in both the P2P case, which remained under seal, and the 1983 murder of Pat Spirito.
Caramandi, who had known Scarfo since the early 1970s, understood that the volatile mob boss was furious that Caramandi had talked so recklessly in mentioning both Scarfo’s name and La Cosa Nostra when dealing with the man he was trying to extort, who was both an FBI agent and was wearing a wire.
My uncle had told him to be careful and use his head, but the Crow decided to act like a gangster, which he wasn’t, and he started shooting off at the mouth, playing a role and he buried himself.
Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family Page 23