Last Don Standing

by Larry McShane

  “This is for my father,” said Testa before he and sidekick Joe Pungitore emptied their guns into the hapless Narducci, leaving his bullet-riddled body in the street.

  “Kills him right on the street, leaves his body on the curb,” recalled Natale with admiration. “Boom! Pop-pop-pop. What this kid did was unreal. Chickie Narducci was a capo. Salvie had Pungitore follow him at a distance for days, see what time he would come home, where he would go, what streets he would use. ’Cause Salvie always said, ‘I’m gonna kill him.’”

  But the killing did little to calm the storm raging inside Salvie Testa, as fellow mobster and future informant Nicholas “Nicky the Crow” Caramandi later recalled while in the embrace of the FBI.

  “Salvie used to say to me, ‘I wish that motherfucker was alive so I could kill him again.’ This is how much he hated this man,” the Crow said. “He had no mercy on anybody. Business was business, and killing to him was business.”

  More was to come. Shortly before the first anniversary of Phil Testa’s execution, Salvie had a mutual acquaintance summon Marinucci to a meeting at the Buckeye Club. The unsuspecting second-story man arrived to find a murderous Salvie Testa waiting like a frothing pit bull.

  Testa would kill Marinucci, but only after torturing the mob killer until he gave up another name: Teddy DiPretoro, the turncoat who hid the bomb on Salvie’s father’s front porch.

  Marinucci, thirty, was found dead on the first anniversary of the mob hit, his body stuffed inside a green plastic garbage bag and dumped in a South Philly parking lot. It was murder with a message: his mouth was stuffed full with three unexploded firecrackers, a reference to the explosion of March 1981. His hands were tied with clothesline, and he was shot in the chest, neck, and mouth.

  DiPretoro was so terrified by word of the execution that he turned himself in to police and began singing like a mob version of Philly’s own Teddy Pendergrass. He even confessed to the bizarre May 1980 murder of Edward Bianculli, executed for stealing a box of Valentine’s Day candy from a store where DiPretoro worked.

  “He thought he was gonna get off on this Testa thing, and then he said, ‘I killed this kid,’” recounted Natale. The conspirator turned informant dodged Salvie’s payback only by taking a life sentence for both killings.

  Salvie Testa’s fearsome reputation was burnished by a bizarre ability to dodge death. Three attempts were made on his life as part of a mob war that left two dozen bodies scattered around the Philadelphia area. In 1980, he was shot in the groin and the leg after an angry confrontation outside a local restaurant.

  Officials said the shooting was not mob related. The next one most definitely was.

  On July 31, 1982, Testa was sitting outside a row house near the Italian Market when a car carrying a killer drove past. The shotgun blast left Testa in critical condition with buckshot wounds to the abdomen, arms, and legs. Just five months later, Testa walked away from a botched hit and gunfight in Washington Square West.

  Testa, in contrast with his failed assassins, was so fearsome that he didn’t need a gun to take a life. The young mobster and several members of his crew stationed themselves outside a jewelry store run by the relative of a mobbed-up rival. Testa occasionally tapped on the window, an added touch of menace. The man closed up shop on the afternoon of December 14, 1983, marched into his business’s walk-in safe, and put a bullet into his head.

  The legend of Salvie Testa grew. “I don’t have to ‘hit’ anybody,” he boasted. “I just have to tell them I want to talk to them, and they’ll do the job for me.”

  Testa emerged as the cream of an increasingly meager crop of Philly mobsters, preordained in the blood of his father to assume the family mantle of boss. He stepped hard on a few toes along the way. He had a public breakup with his fiancée, Maria Merlino, the daughter of underboss Salvatore “Chuckie” Merlino, only weeks before a wedding viewed as a union of Mafia royalty.

  The elder Testa had counseled his son about such affairs of the heart: “Be careful what you say and do with the daughters of my friends.” But the young couple had grown up together in the same neighborhood, inescapably brought together at the endless series of baptisms, weddings, and wakes that completed the local circle of life. Their families vacationed together in Margate, on the Jersey shore south of Atlantic City.

  The two became romantically involved a year before Phil Testa replaced Bruno as boss.

  Testa also had a much-ballyhooed falling out with Scarfo, fueled by rumors started by the infuriated father of the jilted bride. But Natale to this day believes that the move on young Testa had but a single motive: pure envy from Little Nicky, who wanted his nephew Leonetti to command the respect given to Salvie by all.

  Natale heard of a meeting in Scarfo’s Atlantic City kitchen just months after the two young gangsters were made. “His venom erupted into a cascade of insults about Salvie’s rise in the Philly mob, and the morals of his girlfriend. Her affairs before they met. The accusations weren’t true, but Nicky spoke as if he was there. He went on and on, spewing about Salvie.”

  Testa, as the son of the family’s longtime underboss, was raised to respect his mob superiors—even those as repugnant as Little Nicky. Despite the warning signs, he showed continued fealty to Scarfo—even carrying the boss’s luggage through the Philadelphia airport when the boss returned home after a jail term for a gun charge in Texas. Young Testa was among the crew that flew back with Scarfo in January 1984.

  “He was a blue blood and respected every rule of La Cosa Nostra,” said Natale. “That’s what killed him. He should have killed Nicky Scarfo immediately after his father’s murder. But he grew up with his father as the underboss, so he knew everything about our life because he was brought up right in the middle of it. Poor Salvie put La Cosa Nostra ahead of everything. It was in Salvie’s blood, and he couldn’t go against the way he was raised. It’s like an underground river running beneath all the homes on a block. Sooner or later, everything’s gonna go.”

  And so it did. Scarfo’s jealousy of young Testa soon exploded into murderous rage. The demented Atlantic City gangster was frustrated by his inability to reach out to the wily Testa, but he had a plan: Little Nicky reached out to Joe Pungitore, Salvie’s best friend.

  As Natale heard it, Scarfo bluntly explained the options to Pungitore—kill Testa or Little Nicky would “kill you, your brother, your whole family.” Pungitore, terrified to stand up to Scarfo, set the wheels in motion to execute his closest friend. Salvie Testa, who had stood alongside Pungitore’s father when they were initiated as made men, would now go down because of the son.

  The message of impending death was delivered to Testa while he was attending a wake for Pungitore’s aunt. In bizarre scene seemingly lifted from an old mob film, Scarfo’s underboss Chuckie Merlino grabbed Testa’s head and planted “the kiss of death” directly on the younger man’s lips as he left the funeral parlor.

  Pungitore recruited Salvatore “Wayne” Grande to assist in the murder plot. Grande had also sworn an oath of Mafia fealty alongside Salvie just three years earlier. And now, they were agreeing to murder their friend. Natale, decades later, remains disgusted at the way two lesser man conspired to kill one of the mob’s rising stars, how far inferior mafiosi took the life of Salvie Testa.

  “Instead of them—if they had balls, like men—go tell Salvie, ‘This is what they want: they want to kill us, they want to kill you. What do you want to do?’ Instead, they didn’t say a word,” Natale spits. “Wayne Grande wanted to be somebody, go up in the hierarchy of the Philadelphia family. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll bring him to the candy store. I’ll kill him.’ They set him up. Lowlifes. When Salvie defecated, they couldn’t even be that.”

  On September 14, 1984, the unsuspecting Salvie Testa arrived at the candy store on Passyunk Avenue. Grande had already hidden a gun inside the cushions of a couch at the location. Pungitore had already sold out his friend. Testa was shot to death, his body wrapped in a blanket and dumped on a J
ersey street, like someone putting out the trash.

  The mob prince was buried in the family plot alongside his mother and father. No one was left in Nicky Scarfo’s way, which was the worst thing that could have happened to his dubious regime. Left to his own devices, Scarfo was already into his gun lap as boss by late 1986, left standing among the ruins of a great family that had once held a seat on the Commission with the five New York groups.

  In November, two of his top killers—Tommy DelGiorno and Nicky the Crow Caramandi—joined Team USA, becoming federal informants to testify against the head of the family. But he was still in charge when John Stanfa walked out of federal prison in the spring of 1987, unsure if the future rested in a return to the Mafia or a slab in a mortuary.

  23

  STANFA REDUX

  While John Stanfa was doing his time, each breath a reminder that he was a lucky man, his uncle John rose to become a full capo running a crew of Zips under the administration of Gambino family boss Gotti. The Queens capo ascended to the top spot by orchestrating the Christmastime killing of Castellano outside a Manhattan steak house in 1985 after Big Paul infuriated the Gotti faction with his imperious behavior. Also, Gotti’s brother Gene was dealing heroin against family rules. Either way, Castellano was out and the publicity-magnet Gotti was in.

  John Gambino approached the Dapper Don, hat in hand, asking if Stanfa could get a pass for his part in the Bruno execution once he left prison.

  Gotti was elated by the proposal. A gift of amnesty would solidify his position atop the Gambino family, already under assault by the mighty Genovese borgata—which had put out a contract on Gotti. The quid pro quo was the full backing of the Sicilian faction going forward. Gotti saw the move as a win-win and cleared the deal to spare Stanfa. Little Nicky, outflanked but trying to save face, insisted that Stanfa never again set foot in Philadelphia—under penalty of death.

  Stanfa, before even checking in with his parole officer, hustled to a Little Italy coffee shop to meet with John Gambino. The two relatives kissed each other’s cheeks, with Stanfa offering his effusive thanks. Gambino explained that the clemency came with a caveat and laid out the details.

  “These American gangsters are careless,” Gambino said, looking his nephew directly in the eyes. “Scarfo, I hear, has no one to blame but himself. He has put himself into a tight spot. Well”—Gambino shrugged—“that’s that. After all, we always heard that he never liked us Zips anyway.”

  Stanfa’s reply was cut off by Gambino, who placed his hand close to his mouth in the old Sicilian style of delivering a message without words. Stanfa fell mute as his uncle simply continued with his thoughts.

  Yes, the deal was for Stanfa to stay out of Philadelphia. So what if he instead extended an invitation for some of his old friends from the City of Brotherly Love to visit New York for a cup of espresso? Scarfo’s end was near, and the future was wide-open. The first invitation went out to his fellow Bruno plotter Felix Bocchino.

  Scarfo’s inevitable racketeering conviction finally came down in November 1988, with the top members of his crew following him like the Pied Piper into federal penitentiaries. Little Nicky received a fifty-five-year term for thirteen murders and attempted killings during his brief and bloody reign. He was convicted in a separate trial for the 1985 murder of bookmaker “Frankie Flowers” D’Alfonso, a mob veteran aligned with the family since Bruno’s early days as boss.

  Scarfo’s nephew Leonetti, after receiving a forty-five-year sentence, flipped and became a federal informant. Left behind on the streets of Philadelphia were an assortment of murdered mobsters, the detritus of the savage Scarfo era.

  Natale, a student of history in Philadelphia and beyond, remains stunned by the swiftness of the once-strong family’s collapse: “It took over three hundred years for the many Caesars to cause the fall and decline of the great Roman Empire. It only took from the murder of Angelo Bruno in March 1980 to 1986 for Nicky Scarfo to destroy the Philadelphia La Cosa Nostra and a generation of loyal but foolish South Philadelphians who followed him, not knowing why.”

  The door was now wide-open for Stanfa, one of the men responsible for the undeserved death of Angelo Bruno, to march across the Walt Whitman Bridge back to South Philly. Bocchino acted as the Zip’s mob “John the Baptist,” spreading the word that Stanfa was coming home.

  Bocchino began his missionary work after three days of scheming with Gambino and Stanfa before returning to Philly, where he visited the wife of imprisoned goodfella Joe “Chickie” Ciancaglini. Could she bring a message to Lewisburg? There was a chance, Bocchino explained, that Stanfa could become boss. If so, the three Ciancaglini sons could become made men.

  No one realized this would equate to signing an order of execution for the next generation of the family in a Mafia version of Cain versus Abel, far from the Garden of Eden. Bocchino was certain that Ciancaglini the elder would jump at the chance for a new role, through the proxy of his boys, to again become part of La Cosa Nostra.

  When the news reached Natale, he was both disgusted and infuriated: “The pity of it all was that no one in Philadelphia had the gumption—or for that matter, the prestige—to reach out for someone on the Commission to verify that this carpetbagger and killer would rule Philadelphia.”

  The toughest of the trio—and the most likely to ignore Bocchino’s siren call—was Michael, who had already earned the admiration of every up-and-comer in the city. He was good with his fists, better with a knife, deadly with a gun. His best friend was “Skinny Joey” Merlino, head of his own crew and the son of Scarfo’s imprisoned underboss.

  Michael (Mikey Chang) was enjoying the early spring of 1989 near the recreation center on South Eighteenth and Shunk Streets when Bocchino pulled up in his Lexus. Mikey Chang, holding court outside the building, recognized Little Felix immediately. His arrival, without warning, raised hackles among the young tough guys until Ciancaglini put everyone at ease.

  “It’s all right,” he declared. “He’s a friend of my father, and one of ‘those guys.’” The meaning was clear to one and all: the old man behind the wheel was a goodfella. Bocchino walked up to Michael and offered a strong handshake meant to send the message that this was a serious call. Ciancaglini, more than a half foot taller, looked down on his visitor.

  Bocchino asked Mikey Chang to take a walk, placing a hand on the younger man’s arm to lead him away from the assembled troops. Michael removed his arm from Bocchino’s grasp before the two went on a short stroll. Bocchino explained that he was just home from New York and meeting with the Gambinos—when actually it was merely a Gambino, John.

  “They have asked me to tell everybody that they are sending John Stanfa to form a new family and become the padrone, with me as his adviser on who should be included,” Bocchino said before laying on the flattery. “Michael, you and your brothers plus your friend Joey Merlino were the only ones I would stand for.”

  Ciancaglini felt something was amiss. Wise beyond his years, he knew there was only one way to find out what it was: let Bocchino keep talking. When the twenty-minute spiel was done, Mikey Chang said he would speak with Merlino the next day, when he was planning a visit to McKean prison. He added one other thing: Ralph Natale, imprisoned there as well, would hear the same news.

  “Don’t take long, Michael,” Bocchino advised before leaving. “They want to know in New York.”

  Ciancaglini later said Bocchino struck him as pure evil. Bocchino left, his job done, but painfully unaware that the young mobster had already thrown in his lot with Natale’s plans to reclaim Philadelphia as his own. The next day, he would speak with Ralphy and his pal Merlino in prison to let them know about the overture.

  24

  A MARRIAGE OF MOB-STYLE CONVENIENCE

  It was a dark, gray, and bitterly cold November day at the snow-covered Federal Correctional Institute, McKean, in Pennsylvania when a busload of forty inmates arrived after a nine-hour trip from the Ray Brook penitentiary in upstate New York near the Canad
ian border. The New York jail was a former Olympic Village converted into a prison.

  Natale was one of the passengers taking the one-way trip. His move to the new facility came as he neared the end of his long jail term and his security level dropped. Natale remembered the thought that passed through his head after the mind-numbing trip: “Another prison. Soon I won’t even know what prison I’m in.” He laughed bitterly, thinking of his wife and kids—now in the same state, but still so far away.

  He reflected back on his father’s advice about doing time as the inmates were ordered to form two lines, where the corrections officers removed the handcuffs attached to the chains around their waists. The new arrivals, each wrapped in a federal-issued orange jumpsuit, were packed tightly into a holding pen meant to hold maybe two dozen men. The guard in charge of processing the inmates awaited, with Natale noticing his nameplate while marching past

  The name rang a bell, but Natale had a lot of other things to think about. But for some unknown reason, Natale became obsessed with the guard’s identity, the mystery gnawing at him. A voice in his head warned this needed to be resolved: “It’s gonna be important to remember that name.”

  The guard called the inmates one at a time for assignment to their new residences. When Natale’s name was finally announced, he approached the desk. Bingo—he remembered where he knew the name from. During his nine years in Lewisburg, a foreman at the prison had had the same last name.

  After the guard and Natale exchanged greetings, Ralph said nothing more. The officer then pointed to his nameplate and asked, “Does this sound familiar to you?” He flashed a smile at the convict.

  Natale noticed that the man was holding Ralph’s prison records and already knew the answer. He leaned close and whispered, “We had a plumbing-shop foreman at Lewisburg with the same name, and for a hack he was quite a man.”