Mafia Prince. Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family and the Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra

365 Pages·2014·5.11 MB·English

by  Phil Leonetti

© 2012, 2014 by Philip Leonetti, Scott Burnstein and Christopher Graziano Published by Running Press, A
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CONTENTS
Foreword by George Anastasia
Preface
ACT ONE
Little Nicky & Crazy Phil
In Plain Sight
La Cosa Nostra (This Thing of Ours)
Young Philip
Uncle Nick
Ducktown
Yardville
L’inizio (The Beginning)
The World’s Playground
The Resurrection
Becoming a Killer
Sending a Message
The Payback
Losing Control
The Big Shot Is Dead
The Ides of March, Part I (1980)
Blood Oath
Thank God for the American Jury System
The Ides of March, Part II (1981)
ACT TWO
The Dawn of a New Era
The New King Is Crowned
A Whole New Ballgame
The Fine Art of Revenge
The Prelude to a War
An Old Foe Returns
The Summer of ’82
Taking a Break
Business as Usual
Cleaning the Boat
Falling Apart
Back in Business
Dead Man Walking
Heading South for the Winter
Memories
The Underboss
The Beginning of the End
US v. Nicodemo Scarfo, Philip Leonetti, et al.
ACT THREE
Good-Bye, Good Riddance
The End of an Era
On the Road Again
Starting Over
The Diary of a Madman
Lost at Sea
Going Home
The Back Nine
Looking Back, Moving Forward
The New Millennium
Que Sera, Sera
Memory Lane
The Last Word
Epilogue: Unfinished Business
Dedications/Acknowledgments
Index

FOREWORD
THEY WOULD MEET IN THE EDEN ROC HOTEL IN MIAMI, IN THE
RESTAURANT THAT LOOKED OUT ON THE SWIMMING POOL.
Meyer Lansky, the aging underworld genius, would be sitting at a table in
the corner. And here would come Nicky Scarfo, the Atlantic City gangster who
was soon to be the most violent Mafia boss in America, and Philip Leonetti,
Scarfo’s young nephew and future crime family underboss.
Three generations of American mobsters sitting around talking. Lansky,
white-haired and thin, in his 70s at the time and fighting heart and stomach
problems, would dominate the conversation with stories about the old days.
Scarfo, in his late 40s, his brown hair combed straight back, his eyes darting
around the room, would nod and occasionally offer an opinion. And Leonetti,
trim and movie-star handsome, in his early 20s, would sit quietly.
Listening.
Learning.
Now one of the most important Mafia informants in history, Leonetti never
said much during those meetings down in Miami. He was just happy to be there.
He looked at Lansky the way others would look at DiMaggio, Caruso, or
Hemingway. One of a kind. A man who defined the world in which he operated.
Lansky was there at the beginning, when it all started, when Cosa Nostra
was formed. Leonetti, who rode to power with his uncle and who for a time
controlled the mob’s rackets in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, is a man who
helped bring it all to an end.
“This was back in the 1970s,” Leonetti said several years ago as he
recounted those trips to Florida. “Any time we went, my uncle would call and
we’d go over and see Meyer. He’d be sitting there in the restaurant. Him, Nig
Rosen. Mickey Weissberg. They used to get together there every day. It was,
like, Meyer’s hangout. They’d go there and play cards. Meyer liked us. He liked
my uncle. So we’d sit around and he’d tell stories about the old days, about
Benny and Charlie and how it used to be.”
Benny was Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Charlie was Charles “Lucky”
Luciano. Siegel, of course, brought the mob to Las Vegas. He built the Flamingo
Hotel Casino in 1947 and that turned the desert into a money machine for the
mob. Then he forgot who his partners were. And so he was killed.
Years later, Lansky still talked about it.
“Meyer told us about how upset he was when Benny got killed,” Leonetti
said. “He really loved Benny. But he said Benny was robbing them guys and he
wouldn’t lilsten. He said Benny never liked to listen to the Italians. And that he
thought the casino was his, which it wasn’t. It was theirs. Benny would only
listen to Meyer and Meyer said he kept him under control the best he could, but
when they decided to whack him, there was nothing he could do. It broke his
heart when they killed him, but he couldn’t stop it. It was business.
“Then he looked at my uncle and he said, ‘Benny was a stone killer, Nick.
But you know, there’s a lot of killers [in the Mafia].’ My uncle just nodded.”
Leonetti would eventually become one himself. That’s part of his story. How
he became a hitman for his uncle, how he turned on the man who raised him, and
how he eventually ended up on the witness stand are all part of what this book is
about.
There has never been a Mafia witness like Leonetti. Not Joe Valachi. Not
Vinnie Teresa. Not Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano.
Leonetti is the essence of what the America Mafia was in the 1980s and what
it has become in the years since. His life was shaped, twisted, and nearly
destroyed by it. His decision to cooperate has turned it upside down.
Call it a story of family values gone awry.
A bloody story of murder that ends with personal redemption.
Murder, extortion, loan sharking, and gambling, Leonetti did it all. Then,
faced with the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison and looking at
the possibility that his own teenaged son might be heading down the same road,
he broke with his uncle, with the mob, and with the life.
From the witness stand he helped bring down high-ranking mob figures in
Manhattan, Brooklyn, Boston, Pittsburgh, Hartford, and Philadelphia. Leaders of
the Genovese, Gambino, Colombo, Patriarca, and Lucchese crime families are
behind bars as a result.
He was, without question, the reason Gravano agreed to testify and,
consequently, the reason John Gotti was finally convicted.