In 1976 The Philadelphia
Inquirer sent reporter George Anastasia (seen in the below photo) to Atlantic City to cover the beginning
of the casino gambling era in the state. In addition to reporting on what he
calls the “unique form of urban renewal” brought about by the building of
casinos in an economically depressed city, Anastasia was also told to keep an
eye on the Philadelphia mob.
The debate in Atlantic City
prior to the approved referendum over casinos included the fear that legalized
gambling would bring in organized crime. But, as Anastasia notes in his book,
Mob Files: Mobsters, Molls and Murder (Camino Books), the mob was already
there.
Anastasia, a veteran crime
reporter and author of several good books on organized crime, such as Blood and
Honor and The Last Gangster, has complied some of his best and most interesting
newspaper and magazine pieces on the mob in this book.
The grandson of Sicilian
immigrants who settled in South Philadelphia, Anastasia began to cover Philly's
Cosa Nostra crime family more and more after the 1980 shooting death of Philly
mob boss Angelo Bruno.
Bruno (seen in the below photo) ran a quiet, highly
efficient organization that controlled crime in Philadelphia and South Jersey.
Bruno's murder set off a mob war that left bodies in the street and grabbed
public attention. Anastasia writes that Bruno's death was a seminal event in
the demise of the Philadelphia crime family.
The mob became Anastasia's
"beat" in the 1990's. He tells a remarkable story about a mob guy who
complained to a young woman who worked with the reporter. The complaint was
that Anastasia always took the government's side in his reporting. Anastasia
told the woman to heave the mob guy call him.
He did.
Anastasia began juxtaposing
the comments of an "underworld source" alongside those of law
enforcement in his pieces. The mob guy loved it and more mobsters started
calling, including Joey Merlino, who rose to be the reputed underboss of the
mob.
The mob guys after Bruno were
not like Mafioso of old, who kept low profiles befitting members of a secret
criminal society. Anastasia reports that the new breed were South Philly
"corner boys." They were third-generation Italian-American, the sons
and nephews of the previous generation of mobsters. They were loyal to each
other but not to a centuries-old tradition of crime.
They were media-savvy and
they liked the publicity. When Merlino (seen in the below photo) was asked by a journalist about a
reported $500,000 contract out on his life, Merlino shrugged and said
"Give me the half-million and I'll shoot myself."
I'm part Italian and a former
corner boy raised in South Philly a decade ahead of most of these new mob guys.
I can attest that very few Italian-Americans are involved in organized crime,
but I believe that Anastasia's coverage of those who are, is first-rate.
His mob stories are brutal,
tragic and funny. They read like Philly's equivalent to the New York hoods in
Martin Scorsese's great crime film Goodfellas.
"Goodfellas don't sue
Goodfellas," a mob diplomat informed a mob associate and potential
litigant in a business dispute with another mob-connected businessman over
garbage collection. "Goodfellas kill Goodfellas," he added
succinctly.
This was one of the more
interesting quotes from the FBI tapes of the Philadelphia-South Jersey Cosa
Nostra crime family members, who were speaking in what they believed was a
bug-free zone. This conversation, and many more like it, was reported by
Anastasia in the Philadelphia Inquirer and repeated in Mob Files.
Believing the FBI could not
plant microphones in a lawyer's office, the Philadelphia-South Jersey crime
family under the leadership of John Stanfa (seen in the below photo), freely discussed mob business with
each other in their attorney's office. But the FBI legally wiretapped the bent
lawyer's office, and the wiretapping produced more than a hundred secretly
recorded conversations from October 1991 to September 1993.
The attorney, who took the
name "criminal attorney" a step too far, was indicted, along with
Stanfa and other mob guys. They were prosecuted based on the tapes as well as
the testimony of several mob guys who became federal witnesses.
“You can’t argue with tapes,”
one mob guy told Anastasia.
In his book, Anastasia
recalls speaking with his editor about writing an Inquirer story at about the same time the Inquirer was competing
with the rival but now-defunct Philadelphia
Bulletin.
“We zig when everyone zags,”
the editor told him.
The idea was to find a different
way, a more entertaining and readable way, to tell the same story everyone else
was telling, Anastasia said. It was more about quality and sophistication, and
it included assuming the readers had the wit an intelligence to get it, to
appreciate it, and eventually, to come and expect it.
“Organized crime is a great
topic for that approach,” Anastasia wrote in Mob Files. “The stories are rich
in detail. The characters are full-bodied. I came away again and again shaking
my head and mumbling about my good fortune. You can’t make this stuff up any
better than it is.”
Anastasia writes that the
Philadelphia branch of Cosa Nostra is
the most dysfunctional mob family in America. He notes that there have been six
mob bosses since he started writing about organized crime: Angelo Bruno, Phil
Testa, Nicky Scarfo (seen in the below photo), John Stanfa, Ralph Natale and Joey Merlino. (There are now
seven, counting Joseph Ligambi, who reputedly became boss after Merlino was sent
to prison).
Anastasia writes that Bruno and
Testa were killed and Scarfo, Stanfa, Merlino and Natale are in prison. Natale (seen in the below photo),
however, is in the protected witness wing. Natale has the dubious honor of being
the first sitting boss to turn on his own organization. It was an odd
situation, in which the mob boss was given a deal to turn on his underboss, Merlino.
“Omerta is like the famous
Liberty Bell,” Anastasia wrote. “Cracked and inoperable.”
Anastasia interviewed mob guy’s
wives, girlfriends and female accomplices who are or were attracted to the
life-style, the money and the notoriety of the mob world.
“Forget the movies,” the wife
of an imprisoned mob underboss told Anastasia. “Forget the glamour and the
hype.”
She told the reporter that
mob life is no way to live, as you will inevitably end up in one of two places,
jail or the cemetery.
Anastasia also tells the
story of a young couple who were indistinguishable from other young couples in
the mid-1990’s, yet this mob hitman and his former go-go dancer wife were
involved in the bloody power struggle that left bodies strewn across South
Philadelphia.
The couple, who are now in
the witness protection program, told the reporter an incredible story. The
hitman confessed to being involved in a number of mob murder conspiracies and
to being the trigger man in the murder of a rival of then-mob boss John Stanfa.
Although she was not formally
charged, authorities say the wife was implicated in a bizarre plot to poison Stanfa’s
rivals by placing cyanide in the drinks of the mob guys as they partied at
Philly nightclubs. Like many of the mob’s outlandish plots, this one was never carried
out.
Anastasia also wrote about
plots and counterplots as the young South Philly corner boys took on the Sicilian-born
Stanfa.
“They included ambushes that
fizzled, car bombs that failed to go off, drive-by shootings that missed their
targets and one-point-blank shotgun assassination attempt that was botched when
the weapon failed to discharge,” Anastasia wrote in the book.
“Some of this is so crazy it
would be funny if people weren’t getting killed,” Anastasia quotes
then-Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Richard Zappile.
Anastasia had access to the
many hours of federal recordings of mob guys as they discussed crime, tradition
and philosophy. The conversions shine a light on the thinking and actions of
organized crime members.
“Cosa Nostra is a beautiful way of life if we respect it,” a mob
philosopher said to another mob guy as the FBI listened in and recorded the
conversation. “The way it’s supposed to be, it’s not an instrument to only make
money.”
Yet, as Anastasia noted in
his book, making money was the dominate topic of conversation heard in the many
FBI-recorded conversations.
Anastasia wrote that the mob’s
demise was due to its indiscriminate use of violence and lack of
self-discipline, a lack of leadership, a loss of “family values,” narcotics and
the sophisticated an coordinated investigations of the mob by federal, state and
local law enforcement.
If you’re interested in
organized crime, Mob Files is a book you should have on your shelf.
Note: The above column
originally appeared at GreatHistory.com in 2009.
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