Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family

by Phil Leonetti

  So the fact that he made it into a prestigious university, coming from where he came from, was a fuckin’ miracle, I couldn’t have been prouder.

  Philip Leonetti was a now 40 years old, happily married, running a landscaping company, and putting his son through college.

  I felt normal, like everybody else, but I knew there was nothing normal about my life. Normal people hadn’t killed people and lived the type of life that I had led, but that was in the past.

  While it seemed that Philip Leonetti was living in a dream, it seemed like anyone still associated with what remained of La Cosa Nostra in Philadelphia and Atlantic City was living a nightmare.

  For starters, reigning mob boss John Stanfa was engaged in a war with a faction that was dubbed the Young Turks, and consisted of Michael “Mikey Chang” Ciancaglini, Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino, and a half dozen of their friends, many of whom were the sons, brothers, and nephews of the defendants who were convicted with Nicky Scarfo and Philip Leonetti in the late ’80s.

  What happened was, Stanfa named one of the Ciancaglini brothers as his underboss. There were three brothers. One of the brothers, John, was in jail and the other two, Joey and Michael, were on the street. Stanfa names Joey Chang his underboss and his brother Mikey Chang is in a group with Joey Merlino who are now opposing Stanfa. These kids were very dangerous and very treacherous. They are the ones who I believe had shot Nicky Jr. in that restaurant.

  Now I’m reading what’s going on in the papers and I’m hearing things when I’m talking to the agents, and one day I say to Frank DeSimone, who was my lawyer, I said, “Frank, you watch, the one Ciancaglini brother is going to go after the other Ciancaglini brother,” and Frank said, “No way, they are brothers.” And I said, “Frank, you watch, this is how these siggys are.” And, sure enough, I was right. I always felt bad because their father was such a beautiful guy, a real man’s man. I felt bad that he had to watch this happen to his sons from prison.

  On March 2, 1993, several gunmen burst into the Warfield Breakfast and Luncheonette Express, a small eatery owned by John Stanfa located only feet away from the warehouse that served as Stanfa’s headquarters near the corner of Warefield Street and Wharton in the Grays Ferry section of South Philadelphia. Joseph “Joey Chang” Ciancaglini Jr., Stanfa’s 33-year-old underboss and the son of imprisoned Scarfo mob capo Joseph “Chickie” Ciancaglini, was exiting the walk-in freezer to begin the prep work for the morning breakfast rush when two gunmen ambushed him and hit him with six bullets at point-blank range.

  Ciancaglini would survive, but he would never be the same. The young wise guy lost his eyesight in one eye, had his speech and hearing impaired, and was forced to walk with a cane following the hit.

  Stanfa believed that the hit had come from the Young Turk crew headed by Ciancaglini’s own brother, Michael “Mikey Chang” Ciancaglini, and Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino, so he decided to strike back.

  On August 5, 1993, two gunmen shot and killed Michael Ciancaglini and wounded Joey Merlino in South Philadelphia. Three weeks later, on August 31, 1993, a white van pulled up next to a car—containing John Stanfa, his son Joe, and an associate who was driving them—and opened fire, spraying bullets from two portholes in the side of the van into Stanfa’s car, wounding Stanfa’s son but failing to exact revenge for the death of Michael Ciancaglini.

  Two months later, Nicky Scarfo Jr. was sentenced to seven years in state prison following his conviction in the racketeering case he was indicted for in 1990.

  While Natale and Merlino masqueraded as self-appointed mob leaders in Philadelphia, Philip Leonetti was thriving in South Florida.

  I spent the rest of 1993 and 1994 building up the landscaping business, but that was pretty much it. They brought me back to New Jersey in ’93 to testify against the Taccettas from North Jersey, but other than that I had very little contact with the government. I would hear from Jim Maher or Gary Langan once in a while, but for the most part life was good and things were quiet. It looked like all of the chaos from La Cosa Nostra was behind me.

  The Diary of a Madman

  IN MARCH OF 1994, JOHN STANFA’S SHORT AND UNEVENTFUL TENURE AS THE BOSS OF THE PHILADELPHIA-ATLANTIC CITY LA COSA NOSTRA CAME TO AN ABRUPT END WHEN THE 53-YEAR-OLD SIGGY DON AND THE ENTIRE HIERARCHY OF HIS ORGANIZATION, INCLUDING HIS CONSIGLIERE, ANTHONY “COUSIN ANTHONY” PICCOLO, WERE ARRESTED ON MURDER AND RACKETEERING CHARGES AND HELD WITHOUT BAIL.

  Stanfa’s 32-year-old archnemesis, “Skinny Joey” Merlino, would align himself and his Young Turk South Philly street crew with Ralph Natale—the onetime union official and former associate of Angelo Bruno—who, at 60, had spent the last 14 years in federal prison and at one time was Merlino’s cellmate.

  When we were having that dispute with Ange over running the union in Atlantic City, Ralph Natale was one of the guys that Ange was pushing instead of us. John McCullough was the other. So after Ange died, we killed John McCullough and we sent word to Ralph Natale that if he ever stepped foot in Atlantic City, we were gonna kill him, and he knew we would have done it. That was the last I heard of him until he got out of jail, and he and Joey Merlino were running the mob. It was a joke; it wasn’t La Cosa Nostra. They made themselves the boss and underboss. Ralph Natale wasn’t even made, for Christ’s sake, so how’s he gonna be the boss of a La Cosa Nostra family? There is no fuckin’ way it was sanctioned by New York or the Commission. This is how bad things had gotten in Philadelphia; this is what it became.

  Nicky Scarfo was now 65 years old, having spent the last seven years behind bars, the last four-and-a-half years in isolation at the federal prison in Marion, Illinois, with the Dapper Don himself, John Gotti, locked down in a nearby cellblock.

  But Little Nicky’s situation was about to go from bad to worse, even though that didn’t seem possible.

  In November 1994, the BOP opened the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado. The supermax prison, known as Florence ADX, was nicknamed the Alcatraz of the Rockies and was built to restrictively house the most dangerous prisoners in the US federal prison system.

  Among the first to be transferred there was Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, the jailed-for-life former boss of the Philadelphia–Atlantic City La Cosa Nostra.

  Scarfo was one of approximately 400 inmates sent to Florence ADX, where he was housed in an underground concrete cell in conditions that made Marion look like a five-star hotel.

  In a series of letters written to his elderly mother between the winter of 1994 and the summer of 1996, Little Nicky’s writings offer a unique insight into the workings of his evil mind from behind bars.

  In one letter, Scarfo discussed life at Florence ADX and his dissatisfaction with the prison job to which he had been assigned:

  “All I get to see here is the sky thru the roof. I can’t see nothing else but the sky. I live like a dog in a kennel. . . . They got me on my feet three hours a day in this furniture factory which is an upholstery shop making a lousy 22 cents an hour. I work 15 hours per week and make $13.00 a month.”

  In another letter Scarfo blasts current mob leader Joey Merlino as a “drunken idiot” and lambastes Merlino and other mobsters for giving interviews to the local newspaper:

  “In the newspapers all I read about is drunken idiots and drunken junkie punks. Since when is it OK to give interviews to the newspaper, they sound like crybabies. They are a disgrace like that lyin’ rat ex-grandson of yours. I predict this drunken idiot will wind up just like ‘Crazy Phil.’ These people make me sick.”

  Later in the same letter, Little Nicky boasts:

  “It’s better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand days like a lamb. And in the end, the lambs get slaughtered.”

  Scarfo’s remarks are chilling when he says of those who have wronged him:

  “I forgive no one and I never forget.”

  When Scarfo learns that Lawrence Merlino, a onetime loyal ally turned mob informant, may have died, he offers
this:

  “Is it confirmed that Lawrence died? I hope it’s true so then they could bury him in the government’s cemetery where all the rats like him get buried. Eventually that’s where his punk nephew, the drunken idiot, is gonna end up, right next to my crazy, lyin’, rat, ex-nephew.”

  The sentiments expressed in those letters didn’t surprise Philip Leonetti.

  This is what I lived with every day of my life with this man. Every day it was someone else who wronged him. Everybody was always out to get him. It never stopped.

  And it didn’t.

  As the letters continued, the jailed don grew more erratic and more agitated about his frustrations regarding his son Nicky Jr., “the drunken idiot” Joey Merlino, and his rage and disgust over the betrayal from his sister Nancy and her son Philip, who he belittled as the witch and her crazy son.

  “Tell Nicky to stay out of those clubs. He is acting like the idiots, only difference is them idiots mean business, they are not fucking around and Nicky is stupid because he doesn’t listen. Tell him to look up the word procrastinate, which means to put off until a later date. Ask him why is he procrastinating with this drunken idiot?”

  More than two decades removed from any contact with his uncle, Philip Leonetti knows exactly what Little Nicky is saying in this 1996 letter to his mother.

  My uncle wants my Mom-Mom to tell Nicky Jr. that he has to kill Joey Merlino and that he wants it done right away. He’s also telling her to let Nicky know to be careful because these guys are dangerous, and if they get the chance, they may try to kill him first. So he is telling him to stay out of nightclubs and places he will run into them and not to waste any more time.

  Little Nicky explodes on his 86-year-old mother in a letter dated January 9, 1996, in response to comments she had made to him about still loving her daughter Nancy and her grandson Philip Leonetti:

  “I want you to live forever, but I want you to have your senses so you could see what happens to wild animals.”

  He later added:

  “It makes me sick to think that you have love for them animals. I hate lying, thieving rats like that crazy bastard grandson that you still love so much. Maybe you should have went with them, could it be that they didn’t want you? That’s how much they love you and besides all of that, fuck God, too. If you really do love that witch, you better say all your prayers for her and that crazy son of hers, because I don’t need no prayers. Their day will come and I will get my satisfaction.”

  Unfortunately for the deranged Little Nicky, even his own mother appeared to be growing sick of his antics and never-ending tirades.

  My mother stayed in touch with my grandmother from the time she left Georgia Avenue. My grandmother knew why we did what we did, and she never gave us any grief about it. When I got out of jail and got settled down in Florida, I was speaking with her several times a week. She tolerated my uncle and all of his craziness because she had to; that was her son and—despite everything he had done to our family, all of the turmoil he had caused—she still loved him.

  During the time Nicky Scarfo was writing these letters from Florence ADX, his nephew Philip Leonetti was making a name for himself, albeit an assumed name, in South Florida.

  Lost at Sea

  BY EARLY 1994, PHILIP LEONETTI’S LANDSCAPING COMPANY WAS MAKING MONEY AND HE BEGAN TO BRANCH OUT INTO OTHER RELATED VENTURES, STARTING A SMALL CONSTRUCTION BUSINESS AND INVESTING IN SOME REAL ESTATE ALONG THE COAST AROUND NAPLES.

  Before I went to prison, I had a decent amount of my own money put aside. I ended up spending a lot of it on legal fees, but I still had a nice little chunk and it allowed me to get involved with a few different things. The landscaping business had grown a little bit and I started a small construction business; I was doing some contracting work and started investing in some real estate. It was nothing major, but we could take a house that needed some work, do the work and flip the house and make a nice little chunk and then roll the money into a new house and do the same thing.

  At that time, I had a nice little office right outside of Naples, and we had a little garage in the back where I kept the trucks and all of the equipment. I was up every day at 5:00 a.m. and I would go for my run, five miles, and I’d come home, get showered and head to the office by 7:00 a.m., ready to start the day. I was always careful, always had my antenna up, always watching my mirrors, and always taking different routes. I would never, ever, let anyone get the jump on me. I was always ready, always on alert.

  I had a secretary, Maria was working in the office doing my books, and I had a couple crews of laborers that worked for me doing landscaping and small construction jobs, and eventually I got back into doing concrete like I did at Scarfo, Inc. in the early days. Things were going good. It was me, Maria, and my mother; Little Philip was out West going to college. I was very fortunate that the work was steady, and financially we were very comfortable.

  Just like when I was in the mob, I enjoyed the camaraderie of being with my guys, who were all young guys, laborers who went to work every morning to make money to take care of their families. I admired that. I also enjoyed meeting the customers and getting to know them. I think my perspective of being in the mob gave me a unique insight and also the ability to read people and situations that allowed me to succeed in legitimate business just like it did when I was in the street.

  While Leonetti had easily made the transition from mob hitman to government witness, he had also easily transitioned himself into virtual anonymity as a suburban small-business owner. The one-time mob underboss was now the boss of his own little empire of businesses, but deep down he wasn’t happy.

  I was ready for a change. The truth is, as much as I enjoyed what I was doing down in Florida, I knew that I didn’t want to be cutting people’s grass or pouring concrete for the rest of my life. And while I liked being in Florida, I knew that it wasn’t the safest place for me or my family.

  As 1994 drew to a close, Leonetti began to plot his next move.

  Some of the best times I ever had were when I was behind the wheel of my uncle’s boat, The Usual Suspects. I never felt more at peace or more free than when I was on the water. There was something about it; I was a completely different person when I was on the boat. Toward the end of 1994 I became obsessed with getting a boat and spending time back on the water.

  But getting a boat to take fishing or going out for a leisurely cruise wasn’t what Leonetti had in mind.

  The 41-year-old ex-hitman was looking for a boat on which he, Maria, and his mother could live as they traveled from port to port looking for a new place to call home.

  When I told Maria what I wanted to do, she said, “Now I know why they called you ‘Crazy Phil.’” But she was supportive, and so was mother.

  By mid-April 1995, Philip Leonetti had sold off all of his real estate holdings in South Florida, sold his landscaping and construction business, and bought a 44-foot motor yacht that would now become his traveling home.

  I loved that boat. It was absolutely perfect for what we were doing.

  As Leonetti, his wife Maria, and his mother set sail, the former mob underboss couldn’t have been happier.

  Driving that boat in the ocean, without a care in the world, now that was freedom.

  Maria and my mother would sit on the deck of the boat and talk to each other for hours, or they would read or sunbathe and I would drive the boat. It was so peaceful, so relaxing.

  Our first stop was Key West, and then we went to Key Largo and Miami. We basically hit all of the coastal towns in Florida. We were just cruising and we were having a ball. Then we hit Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach. We stayed a little while in Fort Lauderdale, where I knew the area from when my uncle had his house there, Casablanca South. I went by the house and I was surprised that it still looked the same as it did back in 1987. Whoever owned it now hadn’t done much work to it.

  I took my mother and Maria to a fancy Chinese restaurant where me, my uncle, and all the guys use
d to eat at all the time. We would take five or six cars and have 20, 25 guys come and we’d spend almost $2,000 every time we went. Spike would have us laughing for hours. My uncle would sit at the head of the table and hold court like a king. We would eat and drink for hours in that place.

  We spent most of June around Daytona Beach, and by the Fourth of July we made it to Hilton Head. We spent the rest of the summer in Hilton Head, and we absolutely loved it there.

  Our next stop was Myrtle Beach, where we stayed for most of September, and then we vacationed for most of October in North Carolina, the Outer Banks. It was beautiful there. They had wild horses running on the beach; I had never seen anything like that. Then we went to Virginia Beach, and we stayed there through New Year’s.

  We got to Ocean City, Maryland, in early 1996, and we ended up staying for a couple of months.

  After more than a year on the ocean, in the late spring of 1996, Leonetti got some unsettling news from back home in Atlantic City.

  Around this time we found out that Mom-Mom had had a stroke and wasn’t doing good, and my mother was adamant about returning to Atlantic City to take care of her. Before we got the news about Mom-Mom, Atlantic City was the furthest thing from all of our minds, but that phone call changed everything.