Last Don Standing
Page 20
His Allenwood arrival caused a stir among the prison’s mobbed-up population. Natale was greeted with sweat suits and his beloved cigars. “It’s a tradition,” he explained.
Natale made another new friend in Allenwood: an Irish priest from New York who made the trip to Pennsylvania, where he tended an imprisoned flock of about seventy Catholics. He worked on Wall Street before answering his calling as a man of the cloth. The unlikely pals quickly hit it off, sharing cigars after mass and griping about the lack of good Italian food.
“He was a real man, this guy—smoked, laughed, cursed once in a while,” said Natale. “He would come up, he’d serve Communion, and he’d hear confession. And I hadn’t gone to confession for forty-five years—before somebody’s wedding. It wasn’t mine! I asked him, ‘Father McDevitt, could you do me a favor after mass one Sunday?’
“He said, ‘Yeah, what is it, Ralphy? Of course.’
“I said, ‘Would you hear my confession next week?’ He said it would be an honor. And he did, he heard my confession. I was the last one in that day.”
The mob killer and the man of God sat face-to-face inside a federal prison as Natale recounted his sins, his darkest secrets from a life of murder and mob mayhem.
“After we finished, we went out for a smoke. I had my cigar. And he told me, ‘You know, this made me feel glad that I’m a priest, because you chose me to hear your confession.’
“And I told him, ‘Because you’re a man, and a man of the cloth, I know you believe in what you’re talking about. A lot of them don’t.’ We shook hands and hugged one another. It was like nothing because I trusted him. No bullshit, no nothing. It felt good telling him. He was such a good guy. I know that’s what a priest should be like.”
Getting old in federal lockup came with its own set of woes. Natale remembers a killer toothache that left him in agony for three weeks, with no way of seeing a dentist. “To get a dentist in Allenwood, you had to be the president. Finally, I said the hell with this. I got the dental floss and turned my back from the cell window. I thought, ‘I gotta pull this—now.’ I worked the dental floss down, cut into the gum, and pop! It popped right out. All the blood came out. Tony the Barber stole a bottle of peroxide for me, and I washed my mouth out.”
Natale’s smile on the day of his release was hardly as bright as the one he brought into Allenwood. The feds offered to put him in the Witness Protection Program, but he quickly refused after leaving prison for the last time on May 19, 2011.
“I never went to no program,” he said with pride. “They said, ‘We’ll put you in the best place.’ What? Come on! My family, my children, my grandchildren—I can’t see them? No way. I didn’t become a witness to live in some closet in Omaha, Nebraska.”
Natale proved right about one thing: he wound up doing more time than his nemesis Merlino. Skinny Joey walked out of a Florida prison two months before Natale’s release.
Once released, Natale made it clear to one and all that he was done as a witness. He’d gone toe to toe with Merlino and the rest. Natale was done working for the government. “Even now, to this day, they want this or that. And I told them when I got done, I will never be a witness against anybody for the rest of my life, and you remember that. I told all the agents and the US attorney. Two years ago, they took a ride to see me when I was living in Baltimore—two FBI agents. They asked about a name.
“I said, ‘Nah. I don’t know. Remember what I told you when I came home? I’ll never be a witness again.”
When Natale exited prison for the last time, his loyal wife, Lucia, and their three daughters were waiting outside. “And then,” he said simply, “I came home.”
EPILOGUE:
LAST WORDS
The don, in his dotage, steers well clear of the streets of Philadelphia and his checkered past. When he talks about the family, he’s referring to the ever-expanding Natale clan.
He’s now the patriarch of a large, sprawling, and successful clan that stretches across four generations. Natale speaks fondly of his wife, and proudly of their five kids, their grandkids, and great-grandkids. The streets of Philadelphia are a thing of the past, replaced by wandering deer and wild turkeys. Many nights, Natale sleeps on the couch—it’s the one place in his new home that feels like a prison bed, and it helps him to drift off.
The only gun he wields is a water pistol to chase the cat off the living room furniture.
Natale is just as surprised as anyone—and more than most—that he’s still alive and well.
“I mean, they were betting I wouldn’t make twenty-five years old when I was on the street,” he says, enjoying the life of a contented man. “He’ll never make it! Now they’re dead, and I’m here. It’s tough.”
He laughs.
Natale mourns the loss of the old Mafia, the world where he grew up. The whole thing was killed by men who were never satisfied with their position or their riches, men without respect for the Life or their own lives.
“Greed destroyed everything,” he declares. “Everything. Ever watch that movie The Wolf of Wall Street? There’s greed in everything—in Wall Street, in politics, in the mob. I can’t make head or tails about it. If you’re doing okay, why get greedy? Why go overboard? You’re making a living, taking care of your wife and family.
“You’ve got a few extra dollars to gamble and have a good time with. What do you need more for?”
Reflecting on his decades in the mob, Natale recalls his personal highlight: “When Carlo and Ang made me and sent me out with all the power of their two families.”
The flip side, his lowest moment? “When I was in prison,” he replies quickly, “and they killed Angelo Bruno.”
Natale, like his old pal Blinky Palermo, wants his remains cremated. He’s already decided on an epitaph: HERE LIES A FOOL.
“I mean that,” he says seriously. “That’s what I have to say. Put that on my gravestone. That’s what we all are, men like me.”
But that’s somewhere in the future. Right now, he’s too busy to consider that option: “I can’t drop dead. I got too much to do in my life.” And while the past may be the past, that’s the world where Ralph Natale finds that he still often lives.
“My head is like an attic in an old house,” he finally says. “It’s filled with all sorts of things. I think about it constantly. Even when I’m asleep.
“The last dream is that I’m in prison again. Every night.”
POSTSCRIPT
On Aug, 4, 2016, Manhattan Federal Prosecutor Preet Bharara unsealed a lengthy mob indictment against members of four New York organized crime families—Bonanno, Luchese, Gambino and Genovese—and the remnants of the old Philadelphia mob.
Among the obscure Mafiosi arrested were goodfellas known on the street as Tony the Wig, Mustache Pat, Tugboat, Stymie and Harpo. Only one name jumped off the 32 pages detailing the myriad crimes: Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino, busted again on a federal racketeering charge, unable to get out of his own way.
“I wasn’t that surprised,” said Natale about the arrest. “I expected it. It’s a wonder somebody didn’t put two bullets into him since he got out.”
The now 54-year-old Merlino, as recently as three years earlier, had sworn off the mob life. “I want no part of that. Too many rats,” he told veteran Philadelphia mob chronicler George Anastasia. After serving 11 years in prison on his federal raps, Ralph’s old nemesis relocated to south Florida and opened a restaurant named “Merlino’s”—where he served as the maître d’. The place suffered through financial woes, in part because Merlino was jailed for four months in 2015 after the feds spied him inside a Florida cigar bar with fellow Philly ex-pat Johnny Ciancaglini. His latest arrest left its future uncertain.
Merlino, it seems, couldn’t escape the lure and allure of the old days, when he served as Natale’s underboss as they reclaimed the city after the disastrous reign of Nicky Scarfo. It’s the old definition of insanity: Doing the exact same thing over and over—and expecting a different
result.
“Look, his IQ might be 84,” said Natale of Merlino. “He’s a complete idiot. He put himself in this position. If he goes away this time, it’s going to destroy him. When he went away before, he did time as the boss—he was young, and thinking about coming home, and people think about you differently.”
If convicted this time, Merlino could stay behind bars into his seventies. He was accused as one of the organization’s ruling triumvirate, along with a pair of Genovese family capos.
The idea of Merlino running the Philadelphia mob from Boca Raton seemed a stretch—like Marlins manager Don Mattingly running the Yankees from Miami. There’s even some question as to its current membership and activities, as the indictment listed six other Floridians as defendants, but not a single resident of the city of Brotherly Love. Yet court papers indicated “the case against Merlino is extremely strong, consisting, in part, of numerous explicit recordings in which Merlino discussed the crimes that he was committing and exhibited his role as a leader.”
Federal investigators say Merlino had failed to listen to his own advice about informants. An undercover FBI agent and a cooperating witness managed to infiltrate the mob consortium dubbed by prosecutors as “The East Coast La Cosa Nostra Enterprise,” operating from Massachusetts to Florida. The witness, according to prosecutors, worked directly under Merlino at one point during the probe.
The details aren’t important to Natale. The bottom line for the retired gangster: The mob of his youth is as dead as Angelo Bruno or Salvie Testa.
“They are what they are,” he said of the 21st century mob. “I’m not patting myself on the back here, but I come from a different time and a different place. There are no old-timers, no men running things. The intelligence quotient is way down.
“Believe me, I’m in a better place.”
From a young age, Ralph Natale saw the future: “Even as a kid I wanted to be a boss, and I did just that.”
Put ’em up: Ralph at age nine, already in training for life’s hard knocks.
A teenage Ralph with twenty-year-old Lucy, just one year into a marriage now in its seventh decade.
A young Ralph behind the stick at The Friendly Tavern, owned by his friend and mob mentor John “Skinny Razor” DiTullio.
Boys’ night out: Ralph (standing center, with a mustache) with an assortment of friends from organized labor and organized crime.
Ralph with (from left) Frank Vadino and Felix Bocchino, letting the good times roll in a South Jersey bar. Bocchino was later one of the plotters behind the murder of Ralph’s friend and Philly mob boss Angelo Bruno.
In Ralph’s words: “[Raymond] Turchi was a great union leader [the president of Union 301] and as he got older he wanted to be something that he wasn't. He got very carried away with his ideas during a convention at my Palm Springs home and I had to have a talk with him. I said, ‘Ray, sit down or you'll never get a chance to get back up.’”
(Right to left) Ralph’s close friend and associate Edward T. Hanley, general president of the International Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union, with union secretary-treasurer John Gibson and Ralph at the Palm Springs housewarming party. Ralph’s luxurious home was on the Palm Springs Country Club golf course, inside a gated community.
Legendary Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa (second from left) with his guests at a Washington, D.C., banquet for the union bigwig. Also pictured, Ralph’s driver and trusted associate Frank Vadino (far left).
(Right to left) Ralph with Buffalo mobster John Sacco, Philly hitman Frank Gambino, and Ronald Turchi at the Lewisburg Penitentiary. Ralph later testified against Gambino.
Ralph and Joseph “Pepe” Marino, a Staten Island holdup man convicted in a 1978 armored-car heist that netted $2.25 million.
Ralph with Philly mobster Jimmy DePasquale (second from left) and (far right) top methamphetamine maker Adrian Mastrangello Jr.
Ralph with Jimmy Flynn, a reputed member of Whitey Bulger’s infamous Winter Hill Gang in Boston. Flynn later changed careers, and played a judge in the Oscar-winning movie Good Will Hunting.
Genovese crime family member Vito Alberti (left) and Ralph’s future Philly consigliere Ronald Turchi (right) inside United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg.
Ralph with fellow inmate Sam Mason (center), who became like a brother to the mob boss, and Ronald Turchi (right). All three were members of the Lewisburg penitentiary fire department.
Jack Jennings, known to his fellow inmates as “Cuban Jack,” was once a trainer for Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s elite inner circle of bodyguards. He is pictured leaning against the pole with his hand on Ralph's left shoulder. Jennings has his other arm around Ronald Turchi, and the man on the other side of the pole is feared Buffalo enforcer John Sacco.
Thomas Andretta (bottom right) is one of the men long suspected in the abduction and murder of Jimmy Hoffa.
Philip “Rusty” Rastelli, boss of New York’s Bonanno family. Ralph asked Rastelli to take a photo once he left prison, and Phil sent this photo to Ralph’s wife.
INDEX
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Accardo, Anthony for Chicago
Congress against
FBI against
accountability
Aldrich, Fred
Ali, Muhammad
Allen, Charlie
betrayal by
as bodyguard
for drugs
for FBI
in mafia
Ralph and
Amuso, Vic
Anastasia, Albert
Anastasia, George
Angelo, Anthony (“Tony the Barber”)
arson
against Mr. Living Room
by Ralph
Atlantic City
casinos in
for La Cosa Nostra
Johnson in
Local 54 for
for mafia
Avena, John
Baldino, Richard (“Bucky”)
Balistrieri, Frank (“Mr. Big”)
bar tending
Local 170 for
for Ralph
Barone, Joe “Pep”
Barry, Harry
baseball
Bernard, Raymond
betrayal by
for drugs
for FBI
betrayal. See also Federal Bureau of Investigation
by Allen
by Bernard
by Bocchino
against Bruno, A.
by Caponigro
by Casale
by Casella
by DiPretoro
by Ferrante
by Gambino, J.
by Lansky
by Martorano, R.
against McCullough
against Merlino, J.
against Milan
by Narducci, F.
against Palermo
by Previte
against Ralph
by Ralph
Ralph discussing
by Salerno
against Scarfo, N.
by Scarfo, N.
by Sindone
against Stanfa, John
by Stanfa, John
against Testa, P.
by Turchi
Bharara, Preet
Bianculli, Edward
Billy Duke’s
Bilotti, Tommy
Black Mafia
Blue Ribbon Meats
Boardwalk Empire
Bocchino, Felix (“Little Felix”)
betrayal by
murder of
bodyguards
Allen as
DeMaio as
Gatti as
Bonanno family. See New York City
Bouras, Stevie
as hit man
murder of
boxing
Ali for
Barone in
Carbo in
Jordan in
LaMotta in
Liston for
mafia and
Palermo in
Patterson for
Williams in
Bruno, Angelo (“The Docile Don”)
betrayal against
Caponigro and
Castellano and
for La Cosa Nostra
DiTullio and
FBI against
as friend, to Ralph
Gambino, C., and
Kossman and
mafia ascension for
as mentor, for Ralph
murder of
pornography and
Ralph discussing
Stanfa, John and
Testa, P., for
wake for
Bruno, Sue
Bruno wake
Leonetti at
Merlino, J., at
Merlino, S., at
Scarfo, N., at
Scarfo, N., Jr., at
Testa, P., at
Testa, S., at
Buchalter, Louis (“Lepke”)
Budweiser Bar
Bufalino, Russell
Byrne, Brendan
Cadillac Linen Co.
Capone, Al
Caponigro, Anthony (“Tony Bananas”)
betrayal by
Bruno, A., and
Down Neck for
as hit man
in mafia
murder of
Caprio, Peter (“Pete the Crumb”)
Caramandi, Nicholas (“Nicky the Crow”)
Carbo, Frankie
in boxing
as hit man
in mafia
prison for
Casale, Philip (“Philly Fay”)