Mafia Prince: The story of Philip Leonetti’s mob hit of Vincent Falcone as ordered and watched by Nicky Scarfo
Vincent Falcone in the trunk of Philip
Leonetti's car.
Reprinted from “Mafia Prince: Inside America’s
Most Violent Mafia Family and the Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra” by Philip
Leonetti and Scott Burnstein. Available from Running Press, an imprint of The
Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2012.
“Mafia Prince: Inside America’s Most Violent Mafia Family and the
Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra,” is the book that came together after gangster
and stone cold killer Philip Leonetti emerged from hiding to tell his story to
Scott Burnstein and Christopher Graziano. Once the underboss to and the nephew
of possibly the most vicious psychopath the mob has ever produced, the
Philadelphia boss Nicky (Little Nicky) Scarfo, “Crazy Phil” turned and
testified, sending dozens of mobsters to jail. Now, years after leaving the
federal witness protection program with a $500,000 bounty still on his head, he
recalls a critical killing in 1978 from their salad days in Atlantic City, when
the two murdered a mob associate that had offended Scarfo.
BY
PHILIP LEONETTI with SCOTT BURNSTEIN and CHRISTOPHER GRAZIANO
To
Nicky Scarfo, killing the Big Shot, Vincent Falcone, had become personal and
Scarfo set out to lull Falcone into a comfort zone and kill him when he least
expected it.
Now around this time a position opens up in the concrete union and
my uncle puts the word out that he wants Vince Falcone to get it. This was a
big deal and something that Vince had always wanted. So my uncle sets the trap
and Vince goes for it. My uncle is acting like everything is fine, and now
Vince starts coming around Georgia Avenue again. We are playing along like
nothing ever happened. Me, Chuckie, Lawrence, the Blade — and Vince is doing
the same because he really wants to be the boss of the concrete union. Now at
this time Alfredo isn’t around anymore, and Vince is hanging with a kid from
South Philadelphia named Joe Salerno, who was a plumber.
Joe Salerno had borrowed $10,000 from me and my uncle and was
paying us two and half points (or $250 per week) in interest on top of the
$10,000 he owed us. It was a standard juice loan and at the time we were doing
a lot of loan sharking. Every week I’d go out and pick up envelopes or guys
would come to the office. Everybody paid because they knew our reputation.
These types of loans were our bread and butter.
With
the holidays approaching and the promise of a new job waiting for him in the
New Year, Vincent Falcone thought he had a lot to look forward to.
He
thought wrong.
My uncle organized a little party at a house in Margate nine days
before Christmas. He was already there waiting for us to arrive. Lawrence had a
Thunderbird at the time and he was driving. I was sitting in the passenger’s
seat, and Vincent Falcone and Joe Salerno were in the back seat. It took us
about ten minutes to drive from the office on Georgia Avenue to the house in
Margate, which was right on the beach. Now my uncle is in the living room of
the apartment on the second floor, and to get up there you had to climb a set
of wooden steps that were adjacent to the outside of the house. The house was a
two story duplex. It was cold and windy and starting to get dark and you could
hear the wind coming off of the ocean. Looking back on it, it was kind of
eerie. I was wearing a black leather jacket and it was zipped all the way up
and I had a .32 revolver tucked into my waistband. Lawrence and Joe Salerno
were ahead of us and talking as they went up the steps. Joe Salerno had no idea
what was going to happen, but Lawrence did. Now Vince is a few feet in front of
me and I am behind him as we are going up the steps but he’s kind of
hesitating, like he’s uncertain of what's going on.
Philip Leonetti
He said, “Where’s everybody at? I thought Chuckie was coming
down.” I put my hand on his back and said, “He’ll be here; let’s go inside and
have some drinks,” and kind of ushered him up the steps. His antenna was
definitely up but I had positioned myself behind him so that if he decided not to
go up the steps or if he tried to get away somehow, I would have blasted him
right there.
When
the four men reached the top of the steps, they walked into the apartment,
where Little Nicky Scarfo was seated on a couch watching a football game
waiting for them.
Little
Nicky didn’t just want Vincent Falcone to be killed; he wanted to be present
when it took place.
This
wasn’t business; it was personal.
While
most powerful mob leaders would seek to insulate themselves from the murders
they order, Scarfo wanted to bask in them and personally savor the experience
in any way he could.
The
Falcone killing also provided Scarfo with the opportunity to commit a murder
alongside his nephew, to literally bind the two men together in what was
becoming Scarfo’s never ending bloodlust.
To
Little Nicky, the entire universe seemed to revolve around three things: the
mob, murder, and family, specifically in that order. The killing of Vincent
Falcone, in the manner he foresaw, gave him the chance to combine all three of
these at the same time in one giant orgy of death, lineage, and La Cosa Nostra.
Nicky “Little Nicky” Scarfo in a 1988 file
photo.
When we walked in, Vince kind of froze and I continued to usher
him inside and to break the little bit of tension that was in the room, I said,
“Come on, Vince, let’s make some drinks.” My uncle, who was still in the living
room watching TV, said, “Hey, Vince, bring me a Cutty and some water.”
Now, at the time, Lawrence was in the dining room area talking
with Joe Salerno, kind of distracting him. That was all happening within
seconds of us walking into the apartment. So we grabbed the bottle of scotch
for my uncle and put it on the kitchen table, and then I said, “Vince, get some
ice.” When Vince started to walk away towards the refrigerator to get the ice,
I reached into my jacket and took the gun from my waistband and I walked right
behind him and blasted him right behind his right ear. As soon as I shoot him,
his body propelled forward and then he crashed into the refrigerator and crumbled
to the floor.
All the sudden, Joe Salerno starts going nuts. He says to my
uncle, “Nick, I didn’t do nothing,” and then to me, “Philip, I didn’t do
nothing.” He’s like hyperventilating. My uncle watched the whole thing, he was
watching as I shot him. Now he gets up from the couch and comes in and tries to
calm Joe Salerno down. He says, “I know you didn’t do nothing, Joe. Relax,
everything is gonna be okay.”
Now Lawrence was standing two feet away from me when I hit him and
somehow his eyebrow caught on fire — it got singed from the flame of the gun.
So my uncle is trying to calm down Joe Salerno, Vince is on the ground bleeding
and Lawrence starts complaining about his eyebrow being on fire. So I say,
“J---- C----- Lawrence, you knew I was gonna shoot him. Why the f--- were you
standing so close to him?”
With all of this going on my uncle manages to calm down Joe
Salerno.
My uncle comes over to where Vince is lying and kneels down next
to him and says, “He’s still breathing, give him another one right here,” and
he moves Vince’s jacket a bit and points to his heart. So Vince is lying there
and there is a pool of blood forming underneath of him and he is like gurgling,
trying to breath and I stood over him and raised the gun and shot him one more
time in the chest. The impact of the second shot caused his body to jerk and
then that was it, he was dead.
At this point my uncle was ecstatic. He jumped to his feet and
said, “The big shot is dead, look at him,” and he kind of mocked him by
gesturing to the body and called him a “piece of s--- c---sucker.” He was
actually cursing at the corpse. Now I have the gun in my hand and I turn to Joe
Salerno, who is standing right there and I look him dead in the eye and I said,
“He was a no good mother------. I wish I could bring him to life so I could him
kill again.” I was prepared to kill Joe Salerno, too. I didn’t give a f---; I
woulda shot him right there on the spot without any hesitation, but he stopped
carrying on.
Scarfo
then resumed his role as coach and articulated precisely what would happen
next; he didn’t miss a beat.
He said to Lawrence, “You drive Philip back to the office and
bring back Vince’s car. Me and Joe will stay here and clean up.” Now Lawrence
drives me back to Georgia Avenue and I take all of my clothes off, put them in
a bag, and I get right into the shower. I’m scrubbing under my nails, the whole
bit. Now I’m dressed and I go downstairs to the office and Chuckie and the
Blade were there. We were all waiting for my uncle to get back.
Joe
Salerno would later testify that while he and Scarfo cleaned the apartment,
Scarfo told him, “You’re one of us now,” and patted him on the back before
doling out more instructions.
“Tie
him up like a cowboy with his hands and feet tied up behind him.”
Scarfo, right, and Leonetti, left, sit in court
in Atlantic City, on Nov. 3, 1986.
WHEN
Lawrence Merlino arrived back at the home about 30 minutes later, he discovered
that Falcone’s body had been wrapped up in a blanket and tied up exactly as
Scarfo had instructed.
He
also discovered something else.
Lawrence told me when he got there that my uncle was fall-down
drunk and he couldn’t even stand up.
According
to Salerno, while he followed Scarfo’s instructions on tying up the body and
cleaning the kitchen, Little Nicky sat at the kitchen table and drank the
entire bottle of scotch that had been used as a ruse to trap Falcone, and was belittling
the dead man and waxing philosophical about what the future held, not only for
the Scarfo gang, but for the entire Philadelphia mob.
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