Turncoat's new book details life of crime in Atlantic City
Atlantic City’s Ducktown was once the hub of the
local mob, a powerful group that at one point owned the city’s mayor, its
unions and even handpicked its police chief, according to a book by the former
underboss.
“We had the kind of
power ... where we could start a citywide strike with a single phone call and
literally shut down the casinos,” Philip Leonetti wrote in his new book, “Mafia
Prince: Inside America’s Most Violent Crime Family and the Bloody Fall of La
Cosa Nostra.”
“We also had the kind
of power that, if people didn’t do what we told them to do, we’d kill them and
everyone knew that,” Leonetti wrote.
Movies and television
glorify the mob, Leonetti said during a telephone interview with The Press of
Atlantic City this week. But “the only similarities would be people getting
killed.”
Leonetti has made sure
he’s not one of them. He lives under a false identity because his uncle —
jailed mob boss Nicodemo Scarfo — put a half-million-dollar bounty on his head
for turning informant nearly a quarter-century ago.
Going against the
family was a difficult decision for the man raised under the themes of loyalty
and honor, with an understanding that not following the rules could be a death
sentence. Sentences Leonetti himself once dished out with a gun.
When casinos first came
to the resort in 1978, Gov. Brendan Byrne stood on the Boardwalk and warned
organized-crime leaders: “Keep your filthy hands out of Atlantic City.”
Just a few blocks away,
“Little Nicky” Scarfo and his nephew, known at the time as “Crazy Phil,” had a
laugh watching the speech live.
“What’s this guy
talkin’ about?” Scarfo asked Leonetti. “Doesn’t he know we’re already here?”
A few years later, Mike
Matthews wanted to be mayor, and they had the power to make that happen. They
gave him $200,000 for his campaign and got the unions to support him. They also
went to a police officer who grew up in the neighborhood, Joe Pasquale.
“You make sure
everybody votes for Mike, and I guarantee you, you’ll be the chief of police,”
Leonetti says of the conversation.
Matthews became mayor
in 1982. Within two years, Pasquale was the chief. Leonetti insists Pasquale
was not dirty.
“Joe was always a legit
guy,” Leonetti said when asked about the now-deceased former chief. “My uncle
used to compare him to (former Philadelphia police Commissioner and Mayor)
Frank Rizzo. He never did anything illegal for us, and we would have never
asked him to.”
There were two reasons
to help Pasquale: “Because we knew him from the neighborhood, and because he
was Italian.”
Matthews, however, was
a business deal. In return for his position, he was firmly in the mob’s pocket.
After getting out of prison, Matthews denied those connections.
“He listened to
whatever we told him to do,” Leonetti said, “except not to talk to any FBI
agents.”
Matthews, of course,
didn’t know he was talking to an FBI agent when he was arranging a deal for the
city’s H-tract — a former dump where the Borgata now is located.
He and Leonetti wound
up arrested.
Things got worse in
1987, when Leonetti, his uncle and 15 others went on trial for participating in
14 murders and attempted murders, along with a list of racketeering offenses,
including extortion and bookmaking.
During an afternoon
break, a lawyer told Leonetti and his uncle that Scarfo’s youngest son, Mark,
hung himself inside the family business. The 17-year-old was alive, but it
didn’t look good.
“I’ve got tears in my
eyes,” Leonetti wrote in the book. “And my uncle — this no-good evil
(expletive) — has absolutely no reaction, no emotion, nothing.”
Instead of worrying for
his son, Leonetti said, Scarfo “felt like it was more of an embarrassment that
Mark was weak and would hang himself.”
It was then that he made
a decision: If he won the case, he and his family would disappear. If he lost,
he would cooperate with the federal government, even if he still went to prison
for the rest of his life.
They lost. He was
sentenced to 45 years in prison. And then, he talked to the FBI. He was out in
five years.
Leonetti had been
taught of the importance of honor and loyalty his whole life.
But “there was no honor
in our life. There was no respect,” he says. “It was all just a farce.”
The true men of honor
ended up being the FBI agents he spoke to. They kept their word to keep him and
his family safe, and some remain friends.
They even warned him
when they believed a young Atlantic City attorney who had represented his uncle
knew his identity and where he was.
James Leonard Jr. was
called to the Knife and Fork Inn to meet someone who said they needed legal
help. But when he looked up to see the man standing at his table, it was
Leonetti.
“My first reaction is
that he was going to kill me,” Leonard said when asked about the meeting.
Instead, Leonetti just
made sure his identity — and that of his wife and son — wasn’t in danger.
Leonard assured him it wasn’t.
“I can’t recall a
single conversation I had with Nicky Jr. where the name Philip Leonetti was
ever discussed,” Leonard said. “That night at the Knife and Fork, Philip said
that it was his uncle who wanted to kill him and that the uncle wouldn’t die
until he did.”
But Leonetti sees
himself as lucky.
Scarfo’s three sons
were all ruined by their father. The eldest broke all ties, including
abandoning the family name. Mark remains in a coma. And Nicky Jr. is now in
jail with two cases pending, each that could put him away for the rest of his
life.
“He suffers because he
wants to be a good son,” Leonetti said of his uncle’s namesake.
Meanwhile, he enjoys
his new life. He does take precautions: He takes different routes to a job he
won’t discuss, and is always on the lookout for anyone who might be out to harm
him or his family. These were tactics ingrained in him at a young age.
Leonetti was only 8
when his uncle took him along to get rid of a truck that had been used to
dispose of the body of a man Scarfo killed inside a Vineland bar. The cops
wouldn’t bother a guy with a kid, Scarfo told him.
His first murder was at
23, when he shot a man to death in broad daylight in the parking lot of the
Ensign Motel on Pacific Avenue.
“It was easy,” Leonetti
said. “I hate to say that. But, just everything went so smoothly. It was, like,
natural.”
Three years later, on
Dec. 16, 1979, he would kill his partner in that hit, Vincent Falcone, as he
got ice for drinks in a Margate kitchen.
Leonetti is now married
to the woman who was dating Falcone at the time. They’ve never discussed the
killing, he said.
They live a happy life.
Leonetti has returned to Atlantic City a few times, including a visit to the
old house last December. A picture in the book commemorates the occasion.
“I love coming back to
Atlantic City,” he said. “I love leaving, also.”
It’s no longer home.
It’s also no longer a little bit of Italy.
He even watches
“Boardwalk Empire,” rooting for the main character, Nucky Thompson, to get
killed. He also questions the reality.
“Here’s a guy that’s
running Atlantic City with no mob,” Leonetti says. “I’m trying to figure out
how he’s doing it.”
The mob is his one
regret.
“You always have
choices,” Leonetti said. “I don’t blame my uncle. My mother didn’t want me to
be involved with him.”
But he looked up to the
man of such little stature who wielded so much power.
“I wanted to be a man
of honor and respect, just like he was, and it was a mistake,” he said. “It was
a big mistake.”
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/communities/atlantic-city_pleasantville_brigantine/philip-leonetti-s-book-details-an-era-of-crime-in/article_2ff522aa-4643-11e2-9a7f-0019bb2963f4.html
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