A Look Back At The Infamous Boston Criminal Whitey Bulger: My Crime Beat Column On 'Whitey: The Life Of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss'

Back in 2013 I reviewed a good book on the notorious Boston criminal Whitey Bulger for the Washington Times, and I later interviewed one of the authors in my Crime Beat column. 

You can read the Crime Beat column and link to the Washington Times review below: 

As I wrote in my Washington Times review of Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss (Crown), there have been many books written about James “Whitey’ Bulger, the Boston Irish mob boss currently on trial in Boston for 19 murders and other crimes, and up to now Black Mass by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill was the best of the bunch.

But with Whitey, Lehr and O’Neill have surpassed themselves.

Dick Lehr (seen in the below photo) is a professor of journalism at Boston University and a former Boston Globe reporter. He is the co-author of Black Mass and The Underboss, along with Gerald O’Neill.

I contacted Dick Lehr and my interview with him is below: 

DAVIS: I worked for a Defense Department command in Philadelphia and for a time Boston was our regional headquarters. During those years I was a frequent visitor to Boston, and I grew fond of the city.           

LEHR: There is a small-big city feel, or a big-small city feel. 

DAVIS: I liked the bars as well. 

LEHR: Then we have something else in common.

DAVIS:  I enjoyed your previous books, such as Black Mass and I enjoyed Whitey. Whitey Bulger is an interesting guy, although he is a God-awful criminal. I’ve covered organized crime for a good number of years now and I most recently interviewed Philip Leonetti, the former underboss of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family in Philadelphia and South Jersey. He said that he killed “bad guys.” They were trying to kill him, so he killed them. He said he never killed innocent people. Whitey Bulger, on the other hand, not only killed rival criminals, he reportedly strangled and murdered two innocent women. 

LEHR: His first known murder was a mistake. He intended to kill a competing gang member, but he ended up killing the guy’s brother. He just shrugged it off.  

DAVIS: That’s a bad start. So it seems Bulger is in a class by himself, would you agree? 

LEHR: Yes, I think it shows the extreme depravity and viciousness that you referred to when you said he was God-awful. In the last month or so, through his attorney, he is putting out a new line - it sounds like Leonetti – that the people he killed deserved to be killed and he never killed those girls. It’s just Whitey being Whitey.        

DAVIS:  That’s been a mob thing for years, saying we only kill each other.       

LEHR: Whitey is trying to take back those murders, saying that I didn’t kill those girls. I wouldn’t do that. He is trying to get himself back to being what is more gangster-respectable. His problem is that the evidence seems overwhelming against him in connection to those two murders and already federal court judges have ruled that he killed them.      

DAVIS:  His partner-in-crime, Steven “the Rifleman” Flemmi, testified that Bulger killed the girls, right?

LEHR:  Yes, and Kevin Weeks. 

DAVIS:  Philip Leonetti recently wrote a piece in the Huffington Post. He wrote that when he was the Philadelphia underboss and Nicodemo Scarfo, his uncle and the Philadelphia boss, was in prison, he met with the New England Cosa Nostra guys and they were complaining about Bulger. Leonetti said they had described him disdainfully as a drug dealer and not a mob guy or true gangster. Do you think that is an accurate view of him by the Boston mob? 

LEHR: I think that is a true view of how someone in their shoes would look at someone like Whitey Bulger. He was a drug dealer in the 80’s and he made a ton of money off of cocaine. I think they underestimated him if they considered him just a nasty little drug dealer. They are underestimating or under-evaluating his position and his standing in the underworld. He was “it” in the 1980’s. So whether you are from New England or Leonetti from Philadelphia, that is a snapshot that does not capture the scope of this man’s power at the time, partly rooted from the power of the FBI watching his back. 

DAVIS: Bulger is unique in the annuals of crime in that sense as well.

LEHR: Totally, totally. 

DAVIS:  Being an informant to gain police protection is not uncommon in crime and organized crime, but in that Bulger was able to manipulate the FBI agents and have them protect him so well over the years is unique, I think, in crime history. 

LEHR: I think so. We say in the book that is why history will view him as one of the more significant crime figures in America. You can’t mention him without saying in the same breath, corrupt FBI. 

DAVIS: How big was his crime empire? In terms of dollars and business, was he a rival and competitor to Cosa Nostra?     

LEHR: Well, certainly in the Boston branch, which reported to Providence, yes, I think so. This was unique too, in the sense that it was a cult of personality – Whitey’s. We describe it in the book as a closely-held corporation, where he surrounded himself with an immediate circle of unbelievably ruthless killers - Martorano, Weeks, and Flemmi – who were loyal and trusting. Just like his own physique, he kept it lean. He didn’t bother with some kind of extended organization. 

DAVIS: Yes, it was small in numbers compared to other organized crime outfits. 

LEHR:  Yes, and yet he controlled plenty because he was feared and powerful and vicious. There were all these sort of affiliates. All of these drug dealers in “Southie” were under his thumb. He had a drug operation, but they rarely saw him. There was all this insulation in between. So he ran an organization and then beyond the organization he accomplished and had the knack to intimidate major New England drug traffickers. They paid him a tax in order for them to do business. There are estimates of $10 million to $50 million, but who knows? 

DAVIS:  And where is that money today?

LEHR: Exactly. That is the big final question. But he would get a half of million dollar cut out of some major pot load moving through Boston heading up to New England. So that speaks to his presence in a big way, even though he had no extensive organization and no lines of succession like the mafia. It was a cult of personality.      

DAVIS: All based on his reputation that he can and will kill you and kill you viciously. Those stories of him torturing people before he killed them.     

LEHR: Yeah, and this all reinforced the myth of Whitey being the ultimate “stand-up guy,” which was his reputation.  

DAVIS: The Robin Hood of Boston.

LEHR: He despised and hated informers. Psychologically, he was projecting. He was known for that viciousness and torturing. When he was killing an informant, a rat, he brought a special viciousness to bear. That helped feed the notion that Whitey absolutely can’t stand a rat. It was such an anathema to him, such a horror – in part because he hates himself.      

DAVIS: Where did the phrase “Whitey is a good bad guy” come from? 

LEHR: The first time I heard that was from the mouth of FBI agent John Connelly back in 80’s. Isn’t that funny?  We heard that before we knew what we know today. Connelly was simply an FBI agent who was describing this kind of Robin Hood mythic Whitey Bulger crime boss.  

DAVIS: Connelly was saying this to reporters like you? 

LEHR: Yes. Looking back in hindsight, John Connelly was one of Whitey’s best marketers and PR agents. He was spinning the myth of Robin Hood. Sure, he’s a bad guy, but he’s does nice things for people. And we show in the biography, it is an extension of what Whitey has always tried to project all of his life. When he went away to prison, he was trying to say I don’t belong here. It jumps off the page, some of these assessments from Alcatraz. How Whitey was complaining about the vulgarity of his cell mates. Give me a break!      

DAVIS: I read Black Mass when it came out years ago and I thought it was outstanding. It was a comprehensive look at Whitey Bulger’s criminal career and his FBI connection. So why did you and your co-author decide to write a biography of Whitey Bulger? And how does the biography differ from Black Mass?

LEHR: That’s a good question. And the answer is the bulk, and the focus of Black Mass is the Whitey Bulger/FBI years, basically two decades from 1975 to 1995. It has been called the “Unholy Alliance,” and the “the Devil’s Deal.” So when Whitey was captured, we realized that this guy actually now warrants a biography. Part of it was realizing that in 1975 when he cut his deal with the Boston FBI, he was already 48. He lived half a life that we barely scratched in Black Mass and no one else has. There was this whole life that had not been explored and the sense that we talked about – he’s unique now. He has a place as a significant crime figure in American history. We wanted to put the Black Mass years in a larger context of his life story, of a biography, in which we try to not just tell this dramatic and horrific story but get more into the why and how in the making of this monster. I think the challenge of any biographer, regarding any subject, is to go behind the “he did this, and he did that” and try to reveal some insight and meaning.              

DAVIS: I thought Whitey was outstanding. The prison years and the LSD tests were particularly interesting. How were you able to get Bulger’s prison records?   

LEHR: That was a huge breakthrough. In the original outline, we had one chapter for his nine years in prison. Two months later we got hold of his prison file because it has become a public record and one chapter became four, four and a half. It is fascinating.   

DAVIS: I knew he was connected to his Boston politician brother, but from your book I learned that the U.S. Speaker of the House was writing letters for Bulger as well.    

LEHR: Around here we knew that the family had a connection to House Speaker John McCormack, but that’s all we knew. But from the prison file, and also the McCormack papers at Boston University where I teach, we suddenly have all this meat and muscle to put on that skeletal fact. Whitey had a benefit in prison that no other inmate did, which is access to power like that.     

DAVIS: You’ve been covering Whitey Bulger since you were a Boston Globe reporter. How long has it been? 

LEHR: Go back to the late 80’s, that’s when we started and broke the story about some kind of special thing going on between Whitey and John Connelly and the Boston FBI. 

DAVIS: That was your first story? 

LEHR: That was it. It was historic in the sense that it was the beginning of the end. It is another reminder of how journalism can play a role in history.  

DAVIS: Have you met Whitey Bulger?

LEHR: No. I was in court when he came back to Boston, and I’ve written to him at least five times since he’s been back about the biography. Boy, did I want a meeting for the biography, but he refused. He wants everything on his terms. He writes letters to a friend of his, a guy we mention in the book named Richard Sunday and then Sunday gives the letters to the Globe. It’s news in the sense that it is Whitey’s letters, but it is the world according to Whitey. It’s like he has open mike time. It’s not a question of anyone challenging him in any way. That’s where he puts out things like I don’t kill girls and things like that.            

DAVIS: Do you think he is going to write a book or have someone ghost a book for him? 

LEHR: He was writing one while he was in Santa Monica, which I think he had stopped. I hope that it gets released because it will be fascinating to read, although not so much for its truth. I think he got almost a hundred pages out, but the government has it. He needs to find someone who will close their eyes and hold their nose.          

DAVIS: And cash the check. Are you covering the trial? 

LEHR: I’ll be there, and we’ll probably write a new chapter about the trial for the paperback.  

DAVIS: Do you plan on writing another Bulger book? 

LEHR: I don’t think so. But I think one can get a book out of a trial that goes for three months.  

DAVIS: The trial is already making headlines. 

LEHR: Oh, sure. It is a big story. I’ll be there and maybe do some commentary and maybe some op-ed stuff. I’ve already written one op-ed piece.    

DAVIS: I read that director Barry Levinson is going to film Black Mass. Are you involved in the film production?     

LEHR: Yes, in a consulting way. We have heard quite regularly from Barry and his people. They finished the script, and they are polishing it now. They are asking all kinds of interesting questions.

DAVIS: I heard there is also another Whitey Bulger film in the works with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.  

LEHR: We hear that it is a back burner project now.   

DAVIS: You write in Whitey that Bulger is an avid reader. Do you think he read Black Mass and Whitey?   

LEHR: We’ve been told that he had just about all of the books written about him when they raided his apartment, they discovered nearly all of the books written about him in his library.

DAVIS: That's not real smart. I guess he figured that no one would raid his apartment. I read somewhere that you consider Whitey to be the third part of a trilogy with Black Mass and The Underboss, your book on the Boston Cosa Nostra. I read The Underboss a couple of weeks ago and I was curious to find that John Connelly was featured in the book in a much better light than he was in Black Mass and Whitey. Did you meet him when you were researching The Underboss?

LEHR: Yes, that was when we met all of these guys. We wrote the FBI's bugging operation of the Boston mob underboss in a series in the Globe and then expanded it into the first book. That was a "high five" moment for the FBI. The framework of The Underboss is a dramatic reconstruction of the bugging operation.  

DAVIS: At that time you had no idea that the Boston FBI was shielding Bulger.

LEHR: No. The Boston FBI cooperated with that project so they would look good. Journalistically, we interviewed the entire organized crime squad extensively, taping interviews in order to get all the details to do the drama. So we met all of these guys and fast forward a year and a half and we are going down the Whitey/FBI road. We knew all of these players and it’s no secret now, one in particular, became our source. The history-making stuff might not have happened had we not done that first story. There were unforeseen collateral benefits.  

DAVIS: Was Connelly a source?            

LEHR: He was a source for a lot of reporters for what was going on in law enforcement and the Boston underworld. In Black Mass we identify the two FBI sources that confirmed our story so we could publish that special relationship fact. One was John Morris and one was a retired supervisor named Robert Patrick, who also has a book out. We could not have written that breakthrough story in 1988 without confirmation inside the FBI. Our editors wouldn’t have let us. 

DAVIS: What do you think of John Connelly? 

LEHR: He still has quite a following of “free John Connelly” type of supporters. These are people who have their heads in the sand. They are in denial. In my view, he desires to be in prison. He is just corrupt as they come. 

DAVIS: Well, it is not just a case of taking money, he was also convicted of setting up murders, am I right? 

LEHR: Yes. He’s taken money and he’s got blood on his hands. That’s what the Miami jury verdict was all about. He was, as the government proved in that Miami case, a member of the Bulger gang. But that said, it is doing an injustice to Connelly and to the story to say only Connelly and John Morris were the problem. We’re talking about a lawlessness that permeated at least the Boston office of the FBI for years. Too many other agents and supervisors, maybe all the way to Washington, have skated on this scandal. 

DAVIS: I know a good number of detectives and federal agents and all of them have informants and all them protect their informants as best as they can. Most criminals become informant to receive that protection, I’ve been told. What was different with Connelly and Bulger?

LEHR: I think that the detectives and agents you know would look at this relationship and they would see that the power dynamic was all off. They would never let their informants call the shots. At that is what’s become clear in the history of the Connelly/Whitey thing – Whitey was in charge. 

DAVIS: I also enjoyed reading about the history of Boston you included in Whitey. It was interesting how you included the Bulger family within that history. 

LEHR: The idea was to give the readers some context.

DAVIS: Was Whitey Bulger a unique Boston story? Do you think he could have achieved the same success in Philadelphia or New York?

LEHR: I don’t know. There was, to use a cliché, a perfect storm of events in Boston in the mid-70’s. You may have had in New York or Chicago a crime boss who has an agent from the neighborhood. I think it is possible. But it did require an unusual and unique set of factors that blended together. 

DAVIS: New York had the Westies. I can picture Bulger as a member of the Westies.

LEHR: New York is big and has five mafia crime families. There is something focused about Boston, where you have one mafia family and one unique and powerful Irish crime guy. 

DAVIS: How do you think the Bulger trial will end?

LEHR: I don’t think he’ll ever see the light of day. He’s stuck behind bars for however much time he has remaining. I can’t imagine a jury, despite the best and very creative efforts of a very able defense attorney, coming up with any other verdict other than guilty. 

DAVIS: Thank you for talking to us and good luck with Whitey and the upcoming film. 

Note: Bulger was murdered in prison in 2018.

You can read my Washington Times review of Whitey (Crown) via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/13/whitey-bulgers-horrific-crime-span/?page=all#pagebreak

And you can read my interview with Philip Leonetti via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/01/crime-beat-column-mafia-prince-q-with.html

The above photos were provided by Dick Lehr and Crown Publishing.

A Look Back At A Mafia Prince: My Q&A With Former Philadelphia Cosa Nostra Crime Family Underboss Philip Leonetti

Back in 2013, the Washington Times published my review of Philip Leonetti's book Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family and the Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra. 

I interviewed the former Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family underboss who became a government witness for both the Washington Times piece and for my Crime Beat column. 

You can read the 2013 column below:

In my review, I wrote that Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, the boss of the Philadelphia-South Jersey Cosa Nostra crime family in the 1980s, has been described by law enforcement officers and former criminal associates as ruthless, homicidal, greedy and paranoid - even by organized crime standards.

Today, Scarfo, 83, sits in federal prison in large part because of Philip "Crazy Phil" Leonetti, his close nephew and criminal underboss, who became a witness against him.

In the book Leonetti tells the inside story of the dark and deadly life in organized crime. 

As I noted in my review, being half-Italian and raised in South Philadelphia - the hub of the Philadelphia-South Jersey Cosa Nostra organized crime family - I was aware of Cosa Nostra culture at an early age. I know or knew of many of the people in this book. I've also interviewed Philadelphia cops and FBI agents from that era, and I found Leonetti's descriptions of events, people and places to be frank and accurate.

Philip Leonetti called me from an undisclosed location, as Scarfo has placed a $500,000 contract on his life, and I interviewed him over the phone.

Below is my Q&A with Philip Leonetti:

Davis: Why did you write this book?

Leonetti: First, I thought it was a great story. I have a son and I really didn’t have much time for him when he was growing up. But by writing this book he now knows what I was going through when he was a little kid and he now realizes my situation. Of course, I never really talked to him. I never went into any details about my life. He knew what type of guy I was and all, but I never explained anything to him. Now he understands a lot better.

Davis: Have you adapted well after a life in organized crime?

Leonetti: Yeah, it’s great. To be honest with you, the way I’m living now is how I wanted to live my whole life. I was doing my duty by the way I was raised, wanting to do the right thing by them, but this is really what I enjoy.

Davis: Many organized crime guys don’t adapt well after they testify, like Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, who went right back into a life of crime. I suppose they like the excitement, the action. You don’t miss that?

Leonetti: I miss the money. But no, it’s too cutthroat. Nobody is your friend. They’re scared of you, that’s why. What I found out afterwards was everyone hated my uncle, and me, because I was with him all of the time. They hated us because of the way we treated everybody. So, no, I don’t miss anything about that life. I make a good living this way.

Davis: In your book you paint a truly chilling portrait of your uncle. How would you describe him?

Leonetti: Psychopathic. You know, you watch The Boardwalk Empire, that guy Rosetti? He’s crazy. My uncle’s like him a little bit. I see my uncle in that guy. But my uncle didn’t go as far as putting a general’s hat on like Rosetti. That guy was really out of his mind.

Davis: The Rosetti character was a psychopath.

Leonetti: Yeah, but my uncle was more devious. He was a lot smarter than this guy on TV. He was the same way, but in a smart way. He was calculating.

Davis:  You were born to a life in Cosa Nostra. What did your uncle teach you about the life?

Leonetti: From when I was little he would tell me we don’t talk about our life to anybody. We’re different. We don’t live by the same rules that everybody else does. Like the laws they have in this country. If somebody bothers us we’ll kill the guy ourselves. We don’t go rat to the police. This is the environment I grew up in.

Davis: Do you have any regrets about your past life, or any regrets about becoming a witness?

Leonetti: Becoming a witness is not a nice thing. You go up on the stand and testify against people that you know. I didn’t enjoy that at all. But I made an agreement with the government and I testified truthfully about everything.

Davis: Was testifying about your crimes cathartic in any way? Do you regret any of the crimes you committed?

Leonetti: I try to weigh things in my mind. All the crimes I committed, like the murders I was involved with, were all against bad people, guys that were involved in our life. So I really didn’t think anything of it. They were looking to kill us and we were looking to kill them. We weren’t looking to kill no legitimate people.

Davis: You admittedly met and committed crimes with some major crime figures, such as your uncle of course, and Meyer Lansky and others. Can you give a brief impression of Lansky?

Leonetti: He was a little old man when I met him, walking this little white dog. He would meet us at the Eden Roc Hotel. We would go there and meet him, Nig Rosen and a couple of other fellas hanging around. We would sit around and have lunch with him. They were characters these guys, especially Meyer. He told stories about his buddy, Ben Siegel, who robbed the money and how he couldn’t save him. He felt bad about him. It was just talk, generally. It was like an honor just to be sitting there.

Davis: From a crime historical point of view, you don’t get much bigger than Meyer Lansky.

Leonetti: No, you don't.

Davis: You also met John Gotti. What was your impression of him?

Leonetti: John Gotti was a gangster. He was a real tough guy. He acted like a tough guy and he didn’t put up with any bullshit. He got along with us and he liked my uncle and he liked me. We met him a few times in New York and he just wanted to be friendly with us. He wanted to have us as his friends.

Davis: He was looking for an ally on the commission, right?

Leonetti: Yeah. We were friends with him because of Sammy - Sammy “the Bull” Gravano - I was real close to Sammy, but we were aligned with the Genovese family.

Davis: What was your impression of Sammy Gravano?

Leonetti: The same type of guy as John Gotti. These guys were all treacherous. Frank DeCiccio and Sammy the Bull were buddies. When John Gotti approached them to kill Gambino boss Paul Castellano, Sammy and Frank DeCiccio talked it over, you know, after John left, and said look, let’s do this because Paul’s not a bargain. So we’ll kill him now and if John does not work out, we’ll kill him too, that’s all. That’s the type of guys these are. They are all stone killers. This is what you get with the mob. That’s why I don’t miss that life.

Davis: What was your impression of Vincent “the Chin” Gigante?

Leonetti: I was never in his company. I dealt with Bobby Manna (the Genovese consigliere).

Davis: You mentioned that these guys were “real gangsters” and you write in your book that your uncle differentiated between a “racketeer” and a “gangster,” and your uncle was proud of being a gangster. What is the difference between the two?

Leonetti: Gangsters are guys like John Gotti, Vincent the Chin and my uncle, and the racketeers are guys like Paul Castellano and Angelo Bruno. They are business-like guys. They were guys who were more involved in business, they weren’t like street guys.

Davis: Who stands out in your mind from the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family during your day? 

Leonetti: When I was around there were guys like me and Chuckie (Merlino) and Salvie (Testa) and Lawrence (Merlino). We were like a close-knit family. When Phil Testa was alive we were with him. These were the guys I was really friendly with.

Davis: You guys were bringing in a lot on money. Do you blame your uncle for spoiling a good thing with his violent leadership of the Philadelphia-South Jersey crime family? There are those who say that his viciousness and murderous ways pushed guys into witness protection.

Leonetti: That’s the life. He couldn’t handle the job. He talked about everybody else going power-crazy, but he went power-crazy. He wanted to kill everybody.

Davis: I lived around the corner from Angelo Bruno when I was a kid and the general impression of him was that he was involved in gambling, but not drugs and murder. In your book you offer a different portrait. You write that he was involved in drugs and he did in fact order murders.

Leonetti: He was the boss of the Philadelphia family. He ordered murders. Before I was made I did beatings for him that he ordered. But let me tell you something, Angelo Bruno was the biggest drug dealer in Philadelphia. He was smart. He was low-key. He was a real businessman. He didn’t want anybody knowing anything. Long John (Martorano) dealt all the drugs for Angelo Bruno, the P2P, with all the motorcycle gangs and the different connections he had.

Davis: Now ongoing is the big federal mob racketeering trial with Joseph Ligambi and others. How do you think it will turn out? And do you think Joe Ligambi is like Angelo Bruno, a low-key businessman type?

Leonetti: Joe Ligambi has more balls than Angelo Bruno. Ang never killed anybody, Joe did.

Davis: I thought that was a requirement.

Leonetti: That was a requirement, yeah, but he got in because he did things for certain guys and they made him.

Davis: Do you think Joe Ligambi and his crew are going to prison?

Leonetti: I was would say yes if it was not for Eddie Jacobs. He is a good lawyer.

Davis: I interviewed Joe Pistone, the FBI Special Agent who went undercover with the Bonanno crime family for six years. He debunked the idea of glamour and honor in Cosa Nostra. He saw mob guys constantly scheming, scamming to make money and worrying about arrested or killed. In your book you recount the high life of organized crime, but you also note the apprehension and fear that goes along with the criminal life. Do you agree with Joe Pistone’s view?

Leonetti: Yeah, we always watched ourselves. We had to be careful with everybody we dealt with. Once you become the boss someone is always looking to get close to you, make a move on you, or something. We were pretty strong. We had everything covered since that was our thing. It would be pretty tough to trick us.

Davis: But even at your leadership level, you lived in fear of your uncle, at least in the later years, didn’t you?

Leonetti: In my later years, yeah. Eventually I knew he would have killed me. He was getting sicker in his mind, thinking that I might make a move against him, which I thought of, but I just couldn’t do it. You know, I killed a lot of people, but I’m just not a killer. I’m not like him in that way.

Davis: From what you wrote and from others I heard that your uncle enjoyed killing.

Leonetti: Yeah, that was his thing.

Davis: But you would not say that about yourself?

Leonetti: No. I tried to do my best to be a good soldier for him with the killing - and I was good at it - but no, that’s not my thing.

Davis: And that is the difference between the two of you?

Leonetti: Yes. He enjoyed it.

Davis: You wrote approvingly of the FBI Special Agents you dealt with when you became a witness. Did that surprise you that they were good guys?

Leonetti: Well, I take everybody as I meet them. I met bad people and these fellas I met happened to be good guys. There was one other guy in the FBI office that didn’t live up to things that he told me, but Jim Maher and Gary Langan took care of me and whatever they said to me they did. They really helped me out after this transition, when I got out of jail and all.

Davis: I interviewed former FBI Special Agent Bud Warner a while back. He was an aggressive street agent in Philadelphia. You didn’t mention him in the book, but I was wondering what you thought of him?

Leonetti: I remember him. I never really dealt with him, but I know my uncle hated him.

Davis: You mentioned Boardwalk Empire, do you watch mob movies like the Godfather and Goodfellas?

Leonetti: Yeah, I do. I liked Goodfellas. It seemed real. The Godfather was a good movie. 

Davis: You mentioned that the reason you wrote the book was for your son, but is there a message for the general reader? 

Leonetti: Well, yes. Don’t get involved with the mob. It looks good from the outside. Everybody thinks you get the best seats in any restaurant and all the money. But it is a different story from the inside. Depending on your personality, you don’t know how long you’re going to live. 

Davis: Do you think your uncle will read your book in prison? And if so, what will he think of it?

Leonetti: Definitely, he'll read it. I think he’ll curse me; he’ll curse the book and say it stinks. He’ll say it’s all a lie. I wish I could listen to him talk on the phones from prison after he reads the book.

Note: The above photos of Philip Leonetti and Nicodemo Scarfo in prison appear curtesy of Philip Leonetti. Scarfo died in prison in 2017. 

You can read my Washington Times review of Mafia Prince via below:

By Paul Davis - Special to The Washington Times - - Friday, January 4, 2013

MAFIA PRINCE: INSIDE AMERICA’S MOST VIOLENT CRIME FAMILY AND THE BLOODY FALL OF LA COSA NOSTRA
By Philip Leonaetti with Scott Burnstein and Christopher Graziano
Running Press, $24, 320 pages 

Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, the boss of the Philadelphia-South Jersey La Cosa Nostra crime family in the 1980s, has been described by law enforcement officers and former criminal associates as ruthless, homicidal, greedy and paranoid — even by organized-crime standards.

Today, Scarfo, 83, sits in federal prison in large part because of Philip “Crazy Phil” Leonetti, his close nephew and criminal underboss, who became a witness against him.

Scarfo will not be happy with this book.

In “Mafia Prince,” Leonetti tells the inside story of his uncle’s rise to the leadership of the crime family and his violent seven-year reign. Leonetti also writes about his own criminal acts, which include 10 murders. 

Leonetti tells of being born into La Cosa Nostra. In the absence of Leonetti's father, Scarfo became a surrogate father, raising Leonetti from childhood in their way of life.

Leonetti committed his first murder when he was 23, and he went on to commit countless other murders and criminal acts at his uncle’s side. Between 1976 and 1987, Scarfo and Leonetti made millions of dollars through illegal gambling, loan sharking, extortion and skimming from the Atlantic City casinos.

The two were feared and respected by those in the underworld. A radio DJ called Leonetti “Crazy Phil,” and the nickname stuck. Leonetti said he hated the moniker, but his uncle said most mob guys would love to have a nickname like that.

In “Mafia Prince” Leonetti offers a history of the Philadelphia mob, including the murder of longtime mob boss Angelo Bruno in 1980 and how Scarfo became the boss after Bruno’s successor, Philip “Chicken Man” Testa, was murdered a year later by a powerful nail bomb on his front porch in South Philly. 

Scarfo became the boss in 1981 and began an internecine mob war, leaving bodies on the streets of South Philly. He shook down drug dealers and gamblers and beat or murdered anyone who did not show him the proper “respect.”

Leonetti also writes about accompanying his uncle to meetings with notorious gangsters including Meyer Lansky in Miami and John Gotti and Sammy “the Bull” Gravano in New York.

When Scarfo and Leonetti finally were convicted and received long sentences in prison, Leonetti made a deal with the feds and testified against his uncle and other organized-crime figures.

Being half-Italian and raised in South Philadelphia — the hub of the Philadelphia-South Jersey La Cosa Nostra organized-crime family — I was aware of La Cosa Nostra culture at an early age. I know or knew of many of the people in this book.

I was in my late 20s and early 30s living in South Philly during Scarfo's reign, and I recall vividly the mob war and the many murders that occurred in South Philadelphia and Atlantic City. I’ve also interviewed Philadelphia cops and FBI agents from that era, and I found Leonetti's descriptions of events, people and places to be frank and accurate.

I spoke recently to Philip Leonetti, who called me from an undisclosed location, as his uncle has placed a $500,000 contract on his life. Leonetti told me he wrote the book because, first, it is a great story. Second, he wrote the book so his son will understand his life in organized crime and how he was schooled in La Cosa Nostra from an early age by his uncle.

“From when I was little he would tell me we don’t talk about our life to anybody,” Leonetti told me. “We’re different; we don’t live by the same rules like everybody else. If somebody bothers us, we’ll kill the guy ourselves. We don’t rat to the police. This is the environment I grew up in.”

He described his uncle as smart, devious, calculating and psychopathic. Leonetti admitted to committing murders and said he tried to be a good soldier for his uncle by killing — and he was good at it — but he didn’t enjoy the act like his uncle did.

“All the crimes I committed, like the murders I was involved in, were all against bad people, guys that were involved in our life, so I didn’t think anything of it,” Leonetti explained. “They were looking to kill us, and we were looking to kill them. We weren’t looking to kill no legitimate people.”

Leonetti said he is happy in his new straight life, and he wishes he had lived this way all his life. He said he did not miss the treachery and killing from his past life in La Cosa Nostra, but he admitted, “I miss the money.”

“Mafia Prince” offers an insider’s history of the dark, violent world of Cosa Nostra.

• Paul Davis is a writer who covers crime, espionage and terrorism. He can be reached at pauldavisoncrime@aol.com.

On Cops, Crooks, Newspapers And The Internet: My Q&A With Michael Connelly, The Creator Of Harry Bosch

My wife and I are watching and enjoying Bosch: Legacy on Amazon. 

Titius Welliver is very good as Harry Bosch and the other actors in the series are cast well. 

The series is based on the excellent crime novels of Michael Connelly (seen in the above photo). He also serves as an executive producer of the series.    

I’ve reviewed a good number of Michael Connelly’s crime novels in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington Times over the years, and I also interviewed Michael Connelly back in 2010 for my online Crime Beat column. 

You can read the Q&A with Michael Connelly below: 

Michael Connelly is a best-selling crime novelist whose series of crime thrillers about Harry Bosch, a troubled but dedicated LAPD detective, is very popular with crime and thriller readers.

I spoke to Michael Connelly about his latest novel, Nine Dragons, and his previous novel, The Scarecrow. We also discussed the Internet, crime novels, crime, Clint Eastwood, and the current state of journalism.

Below is my interview with him:

DAVIS: I enjoyed The Scarecrow, which I reviewed here. In The Scarecrow did you set out to have a clash of characters, with one from the declining newspaper industry, and the other from the rising technology industry? Were you looking to do more in this novel than just having an interesting backdrop - or in this case, two?

CONNELLY: Yeah. I was trying to carry over a metaphor. It’s very simplistic to say that the Internet is killing the newspaper, but it is part of what’s happening. So I started with the idea that well, if the Internet is a newspaper killer, then I was going to have a newspaper guy go after an Internet killer. That was kind of what made that leap. But often you just take the stuff that comes to you. I have a friend who lives in Milwaukee. He’s like my researcher. He is a private investigator, and he used to work for a law firm. He’s always doing a lot of work on the Internet. That’s what a lot of private eyes do these days, and in an off-hand conversation, he was talking about how they back-up their data to an off-site location. I started asking questions about what an “off-site” location was. That led me to this world of “server farms” and so forth. It just seemed so very fascinating to me and that’s where that angle came from.

DAVIS: I don’t know what was more frightening about the serial killer - that he murdered people, or his ability use the Internet to wreak havoc on one’s life. Serials killers can be boring - in crime fiction, certainly not in reality - but you gave your serial killer character an interesting background in computer technology.

CONNELLY: I think that fiction goes down its own path from reality and, as you say, a serial killer is a very serious and horrible thing in reality, but it’s rare that they have the kind of chops that you see in fiction. It’s a product of having to keep drama as one of the major balls to keep in the air. And so you often see this kind of skill. One of the early origins of this book was an offhand discussion that I had with an FBI agent. We talked about the Internet and how it has all these wonderful things - a great advance for all mankind - but the social networking it offers in the positive way also has a negative side. And that’s that people with aberrant desires and tastes can now go on the Internet, type in a few words, and find someone who has the same tastes. They can find community and acceptance of something that society would not accept. So what the FBI agent was predicting is that you will find more people meeting on the Internet and acting out on their fantasies because they have found someone who shares them. And that is a pretty scary thought. There is no anecdotal or empirical data that proves that’s what happening, or will happen, but I write fiction and it stuck in my head and it was something that came up later in the story.

DAVIS: Do you lament the decline of the newspaper?

CONNELLY: Yes. My job here is to write a thriller - to be entertaining and keep the pages turning - but you always have an opportunity to say something or open up a window on something happening in the world, and what I chose, in this case, was to write about newspapers. I believe that a newspaper is a community tent pole. It holds up a lot of the community. I think you’ll get your information and news reporting and some of your community on the Internet for sure, but it definitely will not replace the newspaper. I just don’t know if a website, a blog, or any of that, will ever be the tent pole that the newspaper is.

DAVIS: It appears to me that the biggest source of news and information on the Internet today are the magazine and newspapers’ online editions. In my view, I think that newspapers are simply going to change from printing paper to posting the publication entirely on the Internet. It will be the same organizations and news and information products, but minus the costly paper and distribution costs.

CONNELLY: I think that they have started that, but have they been able to figure out how to stay financially viable if they are only on the Internet?

DAVIS: No, not yet. Rupert Murdock is planning to charge for access to his newspapers online. I hope this will not be the way to go. I only get the Philadelphia Inquirer in print, but I read a dozen or so other newspapers online.

CONNELLY: I read a lot online too and I get a couple of real papers delivered. Yeah, they are shifting to the Internet, but that won’t last if they can’t find a model. A friend of mine at the Washington Post said someone has to invent the iPod for newspapers, something that captures the market and makes money, or they won’t survive, even on the Internet.

DAVIS: It seems that young people are doing all of their reading online. Reading a print newspaper or book seems to be going out of fashion.

CONNELLY: I have a 13-year-old daughter and I don’t know what we did right or wrong, as she loves reading books, but she is glued to the computer several hours a day. That is the future right there.

DAVIS: Having the newspaper versus technology backdrop makes your book more interesting, it seems to me. It also seems to me that crime fiction and thrillers often tackle subject matters more interesting and more serious than one sees in literary fiction. Of course, what is more serious than murder?

CONNELLY: I share that view. Some of it has to do with the contemporary nature of crime novels. I write at least a book a year. You see that more often in crime fiction, especially in a series. If you want to establish a series, you can’t go six years between books - you keep them coming. One of the positive sides of that kind of hard work is you’re able to be almost contemporaneous with what is happening in the world. There is a reality in these books that you don’t get in the literary novels. A case in point is 9/11. There were several references to how 9/11 changed our world in crime fiction within months. Now you’re seeing the literary giants coming out with 9/11-inspired fiction. It’s all good stuff, but its many years after the fact.

DAVIS: We have always had good crime writers, but we appear to have more truly good crime writers today. In decades past, you might have one or two. We have much more than two today. Certainly, I think you are one of the leaders in the field.

CONNELLY: Thanks for saying that. I think what writers are seeing is an art form there. I loved reading crime fiction when I was growing up. When I read Raymond Chandler, it changed my world. It was not only entertainment and stuff I wanted to read about, there was an art to it, certainly an artistic endeavor to it. If you talk to most crime writers - we all talk about this - we all knew we could write some serious stuff within this genre

DAVIS: I recall reading that Raymond Chandler once said something along the line that “people will still be reading the best of our work when so-called serious literature will be one with the telephone books.” I like that.

CONNELLY: Yep.

DAVIS: You mentioned that you have a researcher and even though you’ve worked as a newspaper reporter, did you do any research on the current state of newspapers?

CONNELLY: Well, I was kind of caught with my pants down. I haven’t been a reporter in 14 years. I wrote the first draft of the book using my experience and knowledge. But then I did something smart. I gave my manuscript to people that are currently in the business, two people in particular. I said read this and tell me if it works. They both liked the story as a thriller, but they said I was seriously out of date in my view of how a newsroom works. Through researching with them and getting feedback from them, I was able to update the book. It was mostly on a technological level. In my first draft I didn’t have Angela Cook, one of the characters, filing a story from the press conference. It was the old way of hurrying back to get it into the paper. I didn’t have anybody filing for the Internet edition and those types of things. The story was all there. The instincts of a reporter have not changed, Jack McAvoy is still kind of my voice, but I did have to update and make it more of a newspaper story set in 2009 instead of 1994, when I quit being a reporter.

DAVIS: That was a criticism of David Simon on his last season of The Wire. The newspaper he depicted was pre-Internet. And a bunch of reporters picked up on that.

CONNELLY: I guess I didn’t pick up on that. I loved The Wire. It was part of the inspiration for me writing this.

DAVIS:: I’m a fan of The Wire as well, but people who worked on daily newspapers said that this was not the way newspapers operate today. Perhaps he was writing from his perspective from a dozen years ago when he was last a newspaper reporter. That was one of the few negative things I read about the series.

CONNELLY: The Scarecrow does have that component in it, and the feedback I’ve gotten from some journalists is that it was there, but I can’t take credit for it. Thankfully my friends that I showed it to were not the type who would just say, oh, you’re wonderful. They did come back and help me.

DAVIS: Were you surprised or shocked by anything you learned, either in the declining world of newspapers or in technology?

CONNELLY: I worked at The LA Times and I read it online so I guess I’m part of the problem. I live in Tampa so I can’t get the paper. I knew the paper had declined since I worked there and, but I didn’t realize how much until I started asking some questions. The biggest shocker was the loss in circulation. When I left there the daily circulation was around 1.2 million and I found out when I was researching this book it’s down to 750,000. I didn’t realize the decline was so sharp. As I was getting into this book and writing about people taking buyouts or forced out and so forth, I became pessimistic about this and started thinking this isn’t a downward spiral for the printed page, it’s a death spiral. As you say, it will resurface in other forms on the Internet so perhaps it’s not a death spiral.

DAVIS: Newspapers claim the Internet is stealing newspaper advertising, but newspapers are also selling advertising on their Internet sites. But I guess not enough.

CONNELLY: The stuff that newspapers used to offer readers are really shrinking.

DAVIS: I love your comment in the novel that the news is on the web overnight, so the newspaper should be called The Daily Afterthought. That was clever.

CONNELLY: That was ripped from my own editor.

DAVIS: You mentioned that Jack McEvoy was your voice. Is the character autobiographical?

CONNELLY: Not the details of his life, growing up in Colorado and having a twin, but what is autobiographical is his view of the business. So when I’m writing this story I’m not pushing my chair back away from the computer and rubbing my chin, wondering what this character would do. I just wrote what I would do. He says what I would say and thinks what I would think. So in that way we’re pretty close. I don’t know if that qualifies as autobiographical.

DAVIS: Do you find it easier to write about McAvoy than a detective like Harry Bosch?

CONNELLY: Yes, definitely, because I do have that process of pushing back and thinking what would Bosch do, what would he say? How would he react? And it takes longer. I wrote this book very quickly, just like The Poet. I didn’t have that middle step. It just came out of me - this is what I would say.

DAVIS: Raymond Chandler is one of my favorite writers and I read that you became interested in crime after reading Raymond Chandler in college.

CONNELLY: I was already interested in crime and I was reading a lot of it before I read Chandler. I had this bias when I was a teenager. I wanted to read contemporary crime stories. This was in the 1970s. I didn’t feel like reading a book set in 40s in LA. I skipped Chandler. Obviously, I heard about him, and he had been recommended, but I was not interested. Then I saw The Long Goodbye, the Robert Altman movie, which was contemporary. I had not yet read Chandler, so I just saw this cool story set in LA and that made me pick up the book. Even though the book was set a couple decades earlier, I realize this book was even better than the movie.

DAVIS: After reading Chandler, did you become a crime reporter with the idea of later writing crime fiction?

CONNELLY: Yes. After I went through that whole Chandler thing, I went into journalism because I wanted a press pass that would get me in the police stations to learn about crime.

DAVIS: Besides Chandler, what other writers influenced you?

CONNELLY: The biggest was Joseph Wambaugh and Ross MacDonald. Those three were very important to me. I was also reading a lot of true crime.

DAVIS: Did crime films or TV crime shows influence you as well?

CONNELLY: Definitely. Bullitt with Steve McQueen was a big one. My mother didn’t like crime movies, but my dad loved them, so he was always taking me to R-rated movies when I was 12. So I saw everything into the 1970s. Kojak and Mannix were also influential. I loved them all.

DAVIS: Clint Eastwood made a good film from your book Blood Work. How was your experience in working with him?

CONNELLY: I tried to suggest that he not change some stuff, but he had his reasons. He sent me the script and I had objections. He didn’t even have to respond, but he sat down and had long conversations with me. He tried to tell me his reasons, which were cinematic as opposed to the printed word story.

DAVIS: I’ve heard that Clint Eastwood is a true gentleman and a total professional.

CONNELLY: He is a very good guy and he was very good to me.

DAVIS: Why do you think crime stories are so compelling and so popular with readers?

CONNELLY: There are all kinds of reasons. The stakes are high. People are making very serious choices and deep down we all want to know how we would react when the chips are down, and we have to make choices with pretty high consequences. I think that is one of the basic things that attracts us to crime stories. There is also a subconscious thing that it is a complicated world and often things are tied up with order being restored in crime novels. There is a comfort in that and what you touched on earlier, these books are very contemporary and they reflect what’s going on in the world. Personally, as a reader, that’s what draws me to them.

DAVIS: Is Harry Bosch based on a detective or detectives you knew as a reporter?

CONNELLY: Yes, in part. I was influenced by many different detectives, and I took from them all. He is also influenced by some of those characters we talked about in shows and movies and fictional detectives from books. So he comes from all over, especially in the beginning. In more recent years, I matched him kind of closely to one specific detective in the LAPD. He does what Harry does, like the early retirement thing that Harry did. Since Harry came back to the police department in The Closers he has been kind of following the career path and even some of the same cases as this detective.

DAVIS: Harry Bosch is a troubled character, isn’t he? I suppose that is one of the things that makes him interesting.

CONNELLY: When you write a book you are a slave to drama and one of the ways to create drama is to have your character have obstacles in front of him. A guy who is troubled, who has difficulty with women and supervisors and getting along - feeling he is an outsider looking in - all these things are ways of bringing drama to the forefront and keeping your reader plugged in.

DAVIS: When you were a reporter did you have good relations with the cops?

CONNELLY: With some of them, yeah. With some of them, no. Especially when I worked in LA where the police department is very media-savvy because one of the main centers of media entertainment. Nearly every cop on the beat understands that something said to a reporter can blow up in his face. When I worked in smaller communities away from LA, like Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I could just walk into the homicide bureau and sit down and just chat and have complete access. That never happened in Los Angeles. They don’t let you near people until they can trust you. It was a much harder job in LA. You make some inroads and you get sources and some sources become friends. Some places you never get through. As an institution, the LAPD and The LA Times hate each other.

DAVIS: Do the cops like Harry Bosch?

CONNELLY: Yes, they like him. I have much better access to police now than when I was a reporter. I get more genuine stories and feelings about the job from them.

DAVIS: Do you feel in some ways you’re still a reporter? Your copy is just different.

CONNELLY: That’s kind of funny to say, but that’s the way I believe.

DAVIS: Do you miss daily journalism or some aspect of daily journalism?

CONNELLY: I miss the camaraderie of the newsroom but as far as writing daily journalism, I kind of feel like I do it. I try to get my books as accurate as possible and I do research like a reporter.

DAVIS: I reviewed your latest novel, Nine Dragons, for The Philadelphia Inquirer, but I’d like to hear you describe the novel.

CONNELLY: It’s a Bosch novel and it been brewing for a while. It is a story about Harry’s daughter, who has been referenced obliquely in the books up to now, and that relationship between father and daughter comes out front. There is a mystery aspect to it and a homicide and Harry is trying to find out who is responsible, but the main focus is his relationship with his daughter.

DAVIS: Can you explain the title?

CONNELLY: Harry goes to Hong Kong in the book and Kowloon, which means Nine Dragons, is part of Hong Kong.

DAVIS: I visited Hong Kong when I was in the Navy years ago. I loved the place. Did you go there?

CONNELLY: Yes, when I researched the book. Very interesting place.

DAVIS: Thanks for the interview and I look forward to reading your next book.

Below is a link to my Philadelphia Inquirer review of Connelly's novel Nine Dragons:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/08/my-philadelphia-review-of-michael.html