Last Don Standing
Page 19
Natale went away before any indictments were returned, popped on a parole violation on June 11, 1998, and done in by his unapologetic embrace of his position atop the family. Though barred from contact with organized crime figures as part of his release, Natale was caught on surveillance on at least ten occasions consorting with his fellow mobsters. He had also ventured into Philadelphia without approval from his parole officer.
The arrest didn’t come as a total surprise: One week earlier, the courteous agents of the FBI told Natale and Skinny Joey they were captured on audio and video at a South Philly birthday party for the boss and his underboss. The two were also spied together in Cherry Hill at an unopened restaurant, and at the Greenhouse Restaurant in Margate, New Jersey.
Natale was leaving his home in the Cooper River Plaza South around 11:15 a.m. when he was greeted by four deputy US marshals and a Camden County sheriff’s officer. Parole violations, unlike the typical arrest, require no court hearing. The boss was taken directly to jail, where he would remain until the state Parole Commission would hear his case.
Joey Merlino, in a stunning development unthinkable only a few years earlier, was now in line to become the street boss of the family.
Natale figured this was the tip of the iceberg. He was right: Previte alone had taped enough chatter to put everyone away for a long time.
Shortly after Merlino’s birthday celebration, it was almost time to blow out the candles on the Natale era.
Natale, though off the streets, couldn’t stay out of trouble. A week later his son-in-law was busted for running a methamphetamine ring and for possession of a .45-caliber automatic weapon. One year later, the Philly boss found himself indicted again on drug charges, accused of financing the operation. Previte’s tapes offering the most damning evidence.
“My son-in-law, he was a carpenter, and at night he would make meth,” Natale explained. “He said, ‘I need some money.’ Okay, here you go. They all knew I was putting the money up for it. They arrested him. Whatever.”
And then one word of dismissal: “Amateurs.”
Natale shrugged off the June 1999 indictment. “Why would it drive me crazy? Number one, every crime family in the country has drugs. That’s bullshit that they don’t. That’s what started this thing. Lucky Luciano was the biggest pimp ever—white slavery, imagine that! And of course drugs. That happened. They all have it. Everybody’s got a connection.
“It’s all bullshit—‘Don’t do drugs, we’ll kill you.’ Well, go ahead and kill me. Don’t do drugs? Everybody’s doing drugs! Angelo Bruno’s legitimate partner, Long John Martorano, was one of the biggest meth dealers in the city of Philadelphia. Also heroin early in his career. Ang knew that and still made him a legitimate partner.”
The indictment actually came as a relief: the grand jury returned no homicide charges from the Philly mob war, and Natale knew Lucia would be taken care of this time. He had Joey Merlino’s word.
“I get indicted, no money,” he said, bile in his voice. “I thought a couple of murders were going to come up, too. Never happened. Joey Merlino told everybody, ‘Don’t worry about Ralph. He’ll kill somebody in prison, and we’ll never see him again, and that’s that.’”
And so ended, after sixteen years of waiting and forty-five months as boss, the brief and ultimately bitter reign of Ralph Natale as the last true don of the Philadelphia family of La Cosa Nostra.
“I put the family back together,” he said. “And I get arrested. Jesus Christ, what the frig happened? Then all hell breaks loose.”
For a second time, Natale found his wife left adrift with no income as he wasted away behind bars. But this time, something inside him had changed. Skinny Joey was no Skinny Razor, and his crew were hardly worth comparing with the mafioso of Natale’s youth. There was no Angelo Bruno, no John DiTullio, nor even a Salvie Testa in this motley crew of street thugs.
“Those punks, we made a pact in prison—if I get jammed up, you take care of my wife and family,” Natale said. “And if you get jammed up, your girlfriend, your mother—I’ll take care of them, and you know my record. Not a dime! I went away, not an envelope. I thought, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m gonna see those punks in a courtroom.’”
When he was locked up yet again, Natale’s rage against Merlino and the rest quickly reached a boiling point. The infuriated boss began to question his lifelong devotion to La Cosa Nostra. By now, the organization lived on only in the minds of men such as him. What was happening in the mob on the cusp of the new millennium had as much to do with the Mafia as the modern Olympics had to do with amateur athletics.
They were two different games entirely.
“So my wife and I reach out for Jimmy Maher, the head of the Philadelphia squad on organized crime,” Natale remembered about a decision that once seemed unthinkable. “He was a young FBI guy when I got arrested in ’79, but I didn’t hold it against him, because he had to do his job. So now he stops by, he saw me, had a little conversation with me.
“I said, ‘I’m thinking I might do something.’ He knew—he said, ‘They didn’t do nothing for you, did they, Ralph?’ I said, ‘That’s my business.’ And eventually I decided I was going to do something against my nature. Those punks! I ain’t gonna do no time for those punks! I wanna see them in the courtroom.”
This was another of Natale’s pinpoints in time, when a single choice transforms a man’s life: the lifelong gangster turned his back on the life that had meant everything to him since he was a boy and became a federal witness.
Joey Merlino had finally accomplished what the Philadelphia authorities, the FBI, and the US Congress could not. After decades of silence, Ralph Natale was ready to speak inside a courtroom about the inner workings of La Cosa Nostra. Natale was quickly dubbed King Rat.
But the old gangster bristles at the suggestion that he was an informant. “I became a government witness. I never wrote a wire. I never entrapped anybody. I didn’t inform on nobody.”
On May 5, 2000, the former Philadelphia family boss arrived at the Camden federal courthouse to confess all in his lifetime of crime. His plane from prison was fogged in, and Natale’s charcoal suit arrived two hours before he did. He then pleaded guilty to seven killings, five attempted murders, extortion, gambling, and drug dealing. Lucia was waiting for him, along with son Frank.
It took just one hour to erase five decades of mob life, putting Ralph Natale on the side of the federal government. The Philadelphia Daily News noted that Natale, facing life in prison, was “expected to do far less time in jail.”
Natale, before his courthouse reunion with Merlino, would first see the mayor of Camden, Milton Milan. The two had struck up a crooked business relationship, with Milan indicted and Natale called to the witness stand.
“Milton Milan would take anything—even a hot stove,” Natale recalled of the corrupt politician. “He was what the guys in Chicago called double-breasted, meaning he had a wife and kids, and a girlfriend/mistress and another whole life. Oh, my! You’re gonna have trouble. We were introduced, and we talked and became friends.”
Natale offered a deal where both sides would profit from millions of dollars in state and federal funds earmarked for Camden’s redevelopment. The mob boss, after reading about the potential windfall in the newspaper, approached Milan to offer the services of his new construction company—which would use minority-owned businesses as a front. The mobster then sweetened the pot with an immediate cash dividend.
“I brought out an envelope with five Ben Franklins inside, handed it to him, and said, ‘Have a good time tonight.’ He said, ‘No, no’—and then right into his pocket.”
There was more money to come, as much as $50,000 funneled to the corrupt mayor. Natale recalled paying for Milan and his mistress to take a 1998 vacation in sunny Florida.
Natale first took the stand as a federal witness in 2000. Turning his back on the mob to take the witness stand against Milan, he said, was as easy as slipping out of his prison duds into one of the tai
lored suits he wore to court during four days of testimony. “It didn’t bother me a bit. The thing I did when I got home to straighten things out—I had to do this, that, the mayor. It didn’t bother me. And then it was part of my deal. It didn’t bother me. I didn’t have anything to prove. What did the mayor end up doing? Three, four years?”
It turned out to be five years of a seven-year jail term.
From the witness stand, Natale offered a pithy summation of his relationship with Milan: “I wanted him to rely on me, and nobody else. If he had a headache, I would send him an aspirin.”
The mayor was convicted on fourteen of the nineteen federal counts against him.
Natale’s cooperation helped convict two Milan coconspirators, politician James Mathes and former union boss Daniel Daidone. The latter was Natale’s bagman, delivering payoffs to Milan.
The main event was next, with Skinny Joey and the rest. This time, Natale’s testimony reflected both federal agreement and personal animus: “I couldn’t wait to see Mr. Merlino again in person.”
Natale, impeccably dressed, climbed into the witness stand on March 30, 2001, the highest-ranking member of the American Mafia ever to testify against his mob compatriots. He wore a dark blue business suit, neatly tailored, along with a white shirt and a blue tie. Merlino fired a death stare at his old boss when Natale swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Skinny Joey was on trial with six codefendants in a massive racketeering case with charges of murder, attempted murder, extortion, gambling, and dealing in stolen property. Star witness Natale was expected to link Merlino to the dead bodies cited in the sprawling indictment.
After years of waiting to look Merlino in the face one more time, Natale felt strangely empty as he began a long recitation of his life in crime. He spent fourteen days on the witness stand in Philadelphia federal court. “I felt nothing. Nothing at all. I’m a cold fish when it comes to that. I’m looking at punks. If it was men, and I did something like that, I couldn’t do that. They’re punks! Look at them! They didn’t take care of my wife and family. You pieces of shit! A man’s gotta take care of that, I don’t justify nothing. I know why I did what I did.”
Which is not to say Natale was a dispassionate witness. He glared right back at Merlino, their eyes locked in an uncomfortable stare down that lasted until a federal prosecutor broke the tension.
Natale offered a one-fingered salute—fuck you, Joey—to his old charges as they shared the courtroom. “I challenged all of them. He must have made a face or something. He’s such a punk, and afraid of me. Of course, I looked right at him. I called him a punk at every trial I was in. I put my life up for him in that cell at McKean. He didn’t bother me. I’ve been in trouble since the day I came out of my mother’s womb.”
Natale recounted his long-ago murders of Feeney and McGreal and offered details on other mob rubouts during his brief and bloody reign. A defense lawyer asked Natale about reports that his family was threatened. The former boss was caught on taped phone calls from prison announcing his imminent return to Philly—a declaration that, though bogus, would deliver a message to his old mob colleagues.
Natale offered his own translation years later: “Whatever I do, don’t you touch my family. ’Cause you won’t have no family when I get home, if I do come home.”
During his fourteen days on the witness stand, he appeared briefly before the very man who wore a wire against him: Previte, aka the Fat Rat. The two, perhaps fortunately, never crossed paths during their time working for the feds.
“I didn’t even know he was there,” said Natale of his mob bête noire. Previte testified that Merlino had borrowed money from Natale, gone to Las Vegas, and blown the whole stake.
Natale acknowledges that even while in the embrace of the FBI and federal prosecutors, he was plotting to whack archenemy Merlino. “Positively! What am I gonna do? That’s me. I’m never gonna change until the day I die. He owed me money. They all owed me money. That’s the way I lived my life.”
The jury returned on July 20, 2001—and acquitted Merlino and his associates of the murders and attempted murders after a four-month trial. They were convicted on lesser counts of racketeering and racketeering conspiracy, including gambling and extortion.
Eleven of the twelve jurors believed the defendants were guilty but thought the government had failed to prove its case.
“There was enough gray area,” one juror explained to The Philadelphia Inquirer. “We believed they did it … but we couldn’t convict on a belief.”
Natale, despite his lingering animus toward Merlino and the rest, insists the verdict meant nothing to him. “I’m gonna tell you something: I wasn’t disappointed. That may sound funny, but it’s true. I was obligated to talk, and I kept my obligation. I wouldn’t want anybody to go to prison. I would have rather done what I had to do on the street. I had no love for them punks. But I know what prison can do to a man. I would have rather taken care of business myself.”
A few months after the Merlino acquittal, Natale learned that payback had finally come to Long John Martorano for his alliance with Nicky Scarfo. The old schemer died on February 5, 2002, three weeks after two shooters unloaded on him while he was behind the wheel of his Lincoln Continental.
He had returned to Philly three years earlier after doing seventeen years for the McCullough murder and a drug rap.
Natale was called in 2004 to testify at a second trial for Merlino, this time for the Sodano execution. Although acquitted of the charge in the earlier racketeering case, a federal judge ruled there was no double jeopardy in a second trial with murder as the charge. Natale arrived at the Newark federal courthouse feeling this case didn’t have a chance after learning that prosecutors would not call Sodano’s killer, Philly Fay Casale, who had joined Natale on the side of the government.
“They said he was half-crazy,” Natale said. “But they didn’t bring the shooter to court! If I knew he wasn’t testifying, I wouldn’t have even gone up there. Philly Fay and I were cellmates in [New Jersey prison] Fairton. We had a great time. I mean, he was a killer—but what a great guy. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.”
Natale arrived for his federal witness finale in February 2004 appearing far more subdued than in his first three trips to the witness stand. His goatee was considerably grayer, and his pricey suits had been replaced by prison-issued shirt and pants. He told the same basic story as the first time, with the same basic result: Skinny Joey walked.
The two frenemies would never see each other again.
27
THE BIG PAYBACK
Natale’s deal with the government did not come with a get-out-of-jail-free card. He remained behind bars while appearing at four separate trials in four years, knowing all along that his ultimate fate belonged to a federal judge.
There was one problem: when Natale arrived in Camden federal court for sentencing in January 2005, the cooperating witness found a most uncooperative judge.
Natale was facing a possible life sentence in his plea agreement, but expected a much better deal. Recent history was on his side: Gambino family turncoat Sammy “the Bull” Gravano admitted nineteen murders and received just five years. Scarfo’s traitorous nephew Philip “Crazy Phil” Leonetti was sentenced to the same amount of time after copping to his own murderous exploits: a trail of ten bodies.
Five years sounded about right to Ralphy, and he’d already been locked up since 1998. “Time served would let me walk out of court as a free man,” he thought.
US District Court judge Joseph E. Irenas was unimpressed by Natale’s turnaround, by the account of FBI agents and federal prosecutors hailing by his efforts, by the presence of Lucia and a dozen of her children and grandchildren sitting in the courtroom.
Natale, his voice cracking and tears filling his eyes, stood and made his own plea: “I can’t bring anything back. I go to sleep every night with the shame and remorse that I feel … and I wake up with it.”
“The judge said, ‘This is not gonna be another Gravano or Leonetti thing,’” recalled Ralph. “I said, ‘Oh, man—here we go.’ Unreal. Everybody thought I’d be able to walk out—I had almost five years in already. I felt bad for my family. But he took so long, I knew I was in trouble. But that was then. This is now. And that’s what counts.”
Irenas banged Natale with thirteen years in prison on his guilty pleas to drug dealing, racketeering, and corruption charges.
“The judge sentenced me not for what I pleaded to, but for what he was told I did,” Natale said. “He thought I was Genghis Khan! He gave me as much time as the guys I testified against. He wanted me to die in prison. He wanted to hurt me.”
Despite the harsh sentence, Natale could see a day when all this was behind him, when he would return home to Lucia and the kids and the grandkids. “I had complete faith that I was gonna live until I want to die,” he said with a chuckle. “If I spent my time thinking about when I was going to die, I wouldn’t be Ralph Natale.”
If he was lucky, Ralph faced another six years in federal lockup. He headed back to prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania.
Upon arrival, he was greeted by Anthony “Tony the Barber” Angelo, a onetime hit man for the Chicago mob. The ex-marine and Purple Heart recipient from the Korean War was doing life, leaving Natale to reflect on the circumstances that had brought them together in this place.
“You say, ‘Why do guys become what we are?’” he mused. “Every different reason—this way, that way.”
Angelo—his nickname came from his day job as a haircutter—served as Ralph’s hype man, spreading the gospel of Natale.
“When I went there, all the guys who didn’t know me had heard of me—some of the black guys, the Latinos, they said, ‘He was a boss, wasn’t he?’” Natale said. “You know what Tony said? ‘He wasn’t a boss. He was a don. He was the last of the dons. There’s nobody else. He worked his way up. He wasn’t handed it.’”