Philadelphia crime family
The Philadelphia crime family, also known as the Bruno–Scarfo crime family, the Philadelphia–Atlantic City crime family, the Philadelphia Mafia, the Philly Mafia, or the Philadelphia–South Jersey Mafia, is an Italian American Mafia crime family based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Formed and based in South Philadelphia, the criminal organization operates throughout the Greater Philadelphia metropolitan area, including South Jersey. The family is notorious for its violence, its succession of violent bosses, and multiple mob wars.
Operating as the Bruno crime family under the 21-year reign of boss Angelo Bruno, the family enjoyed an era of peace and prosperity. A complex dispute involving disgruntled subordinates and territory claims by New York's Genovese crime family led to Bruno's murder in 1980. The killing marked the beginning of years of internal violence for control of the Philadelphia family, leading to a gradual decline in the family's stability.
Bruno was succeeded as boss by his loyal friend, Philip "The Chicken Man" Testa; however, within a year of Bruno's murder, Testa was also murdered, killed in a nail bomb explosion in 1981. When the dust settled from Bruno and Testa's deaths, Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo emerged as boss of the crime family. During Scarfo's reign, the family was known as the Scarfo crime family. Scarfo's 10-year reign saw the family grow in power, but also become highly dysfunctional. Unlike Bruno, Scarfo was infamous for his short temper and penchant for violence. Scarfo increasingly involved the family in narcotics trafficking and demanded that all criminals pay a street tax for operating in his territory. Scarfo also did not hesitate to order people murdered over moderate disputes. The dramatic rise in violence attracted increased attention from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Pennsylvania State Police and New Jersey State Police. Increased violence and law enforcement prosecutions also convinced several mobsters to cooperate with the government in order to escape death or prison. Scarfo's downfall came in 1988, when he and most of his top allies were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms.
With Scarfo's imprisonment, the Mafia hierarchy was convinced that Scarfo was unfit for the position of boss. Once Scarfo was deposed due to rising tensions within the family, John Stanfa was named boss of the Philadelphia family in 1991. A faction of young mobsters led by Joey Merlino disputed Stanfa's ascension, however, launching another war in the family by 1992. The war ended in 1994, when Stanfa and most of his supporters were arrested by the FBI, though less intensified fighting continued until 1996 and began to involve violence from outside the family until the early 2000s. Merlino subsequently took control of the family and allegedly ran the family to varying degrees for the following two decades.
The Philadelphia family has been significantly weakened over the past 30 years due to internal violence, government turncoats, and law enforcement action following the passage of the RICO Act. The crime reporter George Anastasia has described the organization as one the two most dysfunctional Mafia families in the United States, along with the Patriarca crime family of New England. Despite this, the family still remains one of the most active and powerful Mafia groups in the United States.
History
Beginnings
In the early 20th century, several Italian immigrant and Italian-American street gangs in South Philadelphia formed what eventually became the Philadelphia crime family. Salvatore Sabella was the first leader of the group that would later bear his name. They busied themselves with bootlegging, extortion, loansharking, and illegal gambling, and it was during the Prohibition era that Sabella and his crew were recognized as members of the wider Sicilian crime syndicate of New York City and Chicago. Sabella retired in late 1931.First Philadelphia Mafia War
After Sabella's retirement, two of his top lieutenants, John Avena and Giuseppe Dovi, began a five-year war for control of the family. Avena was murdered by members of his own faction on August 17, 1936, and Joseph "Joe Bruno" Dovi became boss of the Philadelphia family.Dovi had good connections with the Chicago Outfit and the Five Families of New York City, and he expanded operations outside of South Philadelphia to the greater Philadelphia area, including Atlantic City, New Jersey and other parts of South Jersey. Narcotics, illegal gambling, loansharking, and extortion activities provided the family's income, and connections to the Genovese and Gambino crime families grew throughout the 1930s and early 1940s.
On October 22, 1946, Dovi died of natural causes at a New York City hospital, and Giuseppe “Joseph” Ida was appointed by the Commission to run the Philadelphia family and its rackets.
Vito Genovese
Joe Ida ran the family throughout the 1940s and early 1950s. Ida and the Philadelphia organization were heavily influenced by the bosses of the Five Families, especially the Genovese family, which sought to control the Philadelphia family. Vito Genovese, an underboss at the time, assumed control of what would become the Genovese family in 1957 after the shooting of former boss Frank Costello, who subsequently retired due to illness.As the Philadelphia family gained more power in Atlantic City and South Jersey, it was viewed merely as a Genovese faction due to the Genoveses' substantial amount of influence over the Philadelphia family at the time. After a 1956 Commission meeting, however, the crime families of Philadelphia and Detroit, headed by Ida and Giuseppe "Joseph" Zerilli respectively, were added to the Commission, establishing the Philadelphia family as its own organization independent of control by New York crime families.
Ida and his underboss Dominick Olivetto were present during the Apalachin meeting in 1957 with roughly 100 other top mobsters. The meeting was raided by U.S. law enforcement, and over 60 mafiosi were arrested and indicted for association with known organized crime members. Ida was named in the indictment and fled to Sicily not long after the meeting, leaving Antonio "Mr. Migs" Pollina as acting boss in Ida's absence.
Angelo Bruno
After Ida retired in 1959 and Pollina was demoted, Angelo Bruno was appointed by the Commission to run the Philadelphia family. Bruno, the first boss of Philadelphia with an influential seat on the Commission, was born in Sicily and was a close ally of Carlo Gambino, solidifying his position as leader of the Philadelphia Mafia. Bruno used his contacts and his own business mind to maintain respect and power among other Mafia bosses in the country. He expanded the family's profit and operations in Atlantic City, which, due in part to its location within the Philadelphia metro area, had naturally become known as the Philadelphia family's turf. Bruno himself avoided the intense media and law enforcement scrutiny and kept violence down. He spent almost three years in prison for refusing to testify at a 1970 hearing on organized crime in the state of New Jersey. After his release, he spent some time in Italy before returning to the United States in 1977.Bruno had a reputation for seeking peaceful solutions to family issues instead of violence. He was sometimes referred to as the "Gentle Don" due to his apparent reluctance to resort to violence or murder if other means of conflict resolution among family members were available, though he had no strong aversion to violence outside of the family. While he preferred negotiation, intimidation, and persuasion or coercion, he generally avoided, if possible, certain violent tactics for pragmatic reasons; mostly, he believed that excessive violence would bring police attention, disrupt cohesion among his ranks, and jeopardize his illegal businesses and ties with ostensibly legitimate businesses and politicians. Bruno oversaw the family's gambling syndicate and preferred more traditional operations such as labor racketeering and union infiltration, extortion and protection rackets, loan sharking, numbers games, and other illegal gambling operations, including infiltrating legitimate businesses. Outside of most family issues, however, violence was still the modus operandi of the Philly Mafia; by the late 1960s, the Philadelphia family used violence and intimidation to control various unions in the food and service industry, such as Local 54 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union. The crime family plundered the local's health and welfare funds and used its control to extort money from bars and restaurants. Mafia members owned or had a controlling interest in many restaurants, bars, and social clubs throughout the Philadelphia/South Jersey area. During the early 1960s, the Philadelphia family was officially recognized as the Bruno family.
FBruno focused mostly on low-risk crimes and gave his subordinates autonomy as long as he received a share of the profits. He prohibited any of his men from getting involved in narcotics trafficking, fearing the long prison sentences that drug trafficking charges could bring. Many of his men disagreed with this decision, seeing the large profits that could be made. Some mobsters, like Philip "the Chicken Man" Testa, Antonio "Tony Bananas" Caponigro, Harry "the Hunchback" Riccobene, and Raymond "Long John" Martorano, ran drug trafficking operations clandestinely without Bruno's knowledge. His men were further angered because Bruno accepted money from Giovanni "John" Gambino in order to allow the Gambino family to sell heroin on Philadelphia family turf in South Jersey.
For decades, the Mafia controlled criminal rackets in Philadelphia's African-American neighborhoods, financing Black numbers operations and supplying heroin to Black drug dealers. In 1970, Samuel "Beyah" Christian and other African-American organized crime figures formed the Black Mafia to take control of illegal activities in the Black neighborhoods of Philadelphia from the Italian Mafia, a venture which was partially successful. After the Black Mafia began extorting Philadelphia family operatives in African-American areas, Bruno eventually acquiesced control of some gambling rackets which had historically been dominated by Italian-American mobsters. As per the agreement, Black gangsters were required to pay a "street tax" to the Bruno family in order to engage in the rackets. The Black Mafia became defunct as a result of a string of convictions and internal killings during the mid-1970s.
Bruno also faced pressure from New York's Five Families to let them have a cut of the business in Atlantic City, a Philadelphia Mafia-controlled city that was at the time transitioning from a city in decline to a gambling mecca. Following its early 20th-century heyday as a respected resort town, Atlantic City had been suffering from a sharp decline in the decades prior to the 1970s. With the introduction of legalized casino gambling in 1977, Atlantic City once again became particularly desired turf for organized crime. However, Atlantic City had long been reckoned as a fief of the Philadelphia family. Under longstanding Mafia rules, the Five Families could only come into Atlantic City with the Philadelphia family's permission—something Bruno was unwilling to give.
On October 15, 1976, Carlo Gambino died of a heart attack. With Gambino gone, Bruno lost his most important ally in the underworld. Many of Bruno's subordinates felt that they were missing out on money because of Bruno's old-fashioned and content ways. His consigliere, Tony Caponigro, who hoped to expand the family's drug operations and was heavily involved in the drug trade largely unbeknownst to and against the wishes of Bruno, approached Genovese family boss Frank "Funzi" Tieri in order to seek the Commission's permission to kill Bruno and take over the crime family. Tieri, sensing an opportunity to take Caponigro's North Jersey gambling operation and set up operations in Atlantic City, lied to Caponigro and told him he had the Commission's support. On March 21, 1980, Bruno was shotgunned in the back of the head while in his car in South Philadelphia by a gunman working for Caponigro. That April, Caponigro visited New York City under the assumption that he was going to be confirmed as boss. Instead, he was tortured and murdered for killing a Commission member without permission. Caponigro's co-conspirators Frank Sindone, Alfred Salerno, and John Simone were also murdered for killing a mob boss without the permission of the Commission.