The Mob's Last Civil War

The sun was burning the dew off the lawn in front of John Stanfa's Medford, New Jersey home as the 53-year-old Mob boss left his house. He and his son, Joseph, 23, were on their way to work. It was early morning and their driver had just pulled his slightly beat-up 1976 Cadillac Seville up the driveway. Stanfa, balding, with thick, sloping shoulders and a broad chest, eased into the front passenger seat. Joe sat in the back. This was how they went to work every morning. They left the house at the same time, took the same route to work, rode in the same car. On August 31, 1993, the routine nearly killed them.

It takes about an hour, during the morning commuter rush, to drive from Medford to Continental Imported Food Distributors, a warehouse in the Grays Ferry section of South Philadelphia. Continental, which distributes imported Italian foods to restaurants and bars throughout the area, is owned by Joe Stanfa and his sister, Sara, 26. On most mornings the Stanfas, father and son, would be in the warehouse by eight A.M. Joe seemed to do most of the work around the place, supervising crews that loaded the trucks, even doing some of the bull work if deliveries were running behind schedule. John, on the other hand, would hole up in an office conducting business that investigators believed had little to do with the price of provolone.

The Cadillac Seville traveled west on Route 70 and then south on Interstate 295 toward the Walt Whitman Bridge, joining the flow of thousands of commuters heading over the Delaware River and into Philadelphia each morning.

At around 7:45 A.M., near the Vare Avenue/Mifflin Street exit on the Schuylkill Expressway, a white Chevy van caught up with the Caddy. In a flash, two 9mm machine pistols popped out of portholes cut into the side of the van and began strafing the Cadillac. John Stanfa ducked down as the spray of bullets shattered the window. Joe, in the backseat, wasn't as quick as his father. One of the bullets caught him above his right cheekbone. He slid to the floor in agony. Stanfa screamed for the driver, Fred Aldrich, to stop the car, that Joe had been hit. Instead, Aldrich rammed the side of the van, forcing it onto the Vare Avenue exit ramp. Then he gunned the engine and continued west on the Schuylkill for another half mile, exiting at University Avenue.

Police would later credit the burly Vietnam war veteran with saving the lives of the Mob boss and his son. But the fact remained that if Stanfa had not been so arrogant, if he had listened to some of his people and left the house at different times, taken different routes, the ambush could have been avoided altogether. But Stanfa had always underestimated the kids--the younger generation of mobsters in Philadelphia.

With smoke and the smell of burning rubber trailing in its wake--the rear tire, punctured by a stray bullet, was now in shreds--the Cadillac lurched around the corner at 34th and Wharton streets and pulled up in front of the Continental warehouse. Joe Stanfa was hustled out of the car and into another vehicle. Rushed to the emergency room at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, he was conscious, alert and, police said, uncooperative.

The hit took everyone by surprise. The victims, of course, but also the public, terrified by the wanton display of violence, and even the cops, who had never seen anything like it during 14 bloody years of Mafia turmoil in Philadelphia. They were used to finding wiseguys with bullet holes behind their ears, wrapped in blankets and cast aside. This was different, crazy. An ambush in the midst of rush-hour traffic, with total disregard for hundreds of innocent people who might have been caught in the crossfire or crushed in a mass pileup. It was out of character--it was more Sicily than South Philadelphia. But that was just the point.

Everyone suspected that the kids were behind it. They were sure that Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino, the 32-year-old son of a Philadelphia capo, was sending a message to Stanfa, a man born in an Italian village not far from Palermo and raised in the old-world ways of the Mafia. The message was: Get the fuck off our corner. Get out of our city. Go back where you belong. It didn't matter that the hit failed. The kids had pulled it off; they were not about to back down. Philadelphia's civil war was entering a bloody new phase.

•

If you want to know about the decline of the American Mafia, look at Philadelphia. The Mob war that is raging there now--the gun battles that have left a dozen mobsters dead or wounded, the turncoat testimony that has brought a series of sweeping Mob indictments, the pending trials and prosecutions that could leave Stanfa and most of his top associates in jail for the rest of their lives, the bloody generation and culture gaps that have continued to widen--is part of a saga that may signal the end of the American arm of La Cosa Nostra. Three of the Mob bosses in the city have been indicted. Two have been murdered. A once low-key and highly efficient crime family has turned on itself. Fueled by greed, treachery and by what appears to be an insatiable bloodlust, the organization is self-destructing.

To track its demise, look to John Stanfa and his misguided attempt to bring the kids under his control. "Stanfa was not CEO material," says Richard Zappile, chief inspector with the Philadelphia Police Department and one of the point men in law enforcement's war on the Mob. "He didn't have the strategic planning ability it takes to lead. He didn't exercise enough control and he allowed things to build up." (continued on page 150) Last Civil War (continued from page 68)

Zappile, 46, is a South Philly guy. Take Brooklyn and shrink it to less than a tenth of its size and you have South Philadelphia. About 200,000 people live there, many in white ethnic neighborhoods that have changed little over the past 30 years. Loyalty, honor and family are celebrated in South Philly, as are its most famous sons: Frankie Avalon, Fabian and James Darren, all of whom grew up in the same area, around 10th and Jackson streets, where Joey Merlino was raised. Gangsters are just a small portion of the population, but for decades their impact on the city has far outweighed their numbers. Angelo Bruno, a longtime crime boss in the city, was never a candidate for South Philadelphia Man of the Year, but he was probably better known than contemporaries operating at his level in other lines of work.

The area has also produced its share of cops. Zappile grew up around the corner from Bruno. As a rookie cop, Zappile walked past wiseguy hangouts on his way to work. Later he was a sergeant in a district where several of Bruno's top associates lived and operated. Over the years, Zappile has seen changes in the mobsters' style: The shift from low-key to high profile, from sly and cunning to bold and arrogant, was accompanied by the loss of values, however repugnant, that had once made the organization seem invincible.

At a back table in a deli not far from police headquarters, Zappile nurses a cup of coffee and talks about the vanishing older generation of mobsters in Philly: "Those guys didn't particularly like one another. But guess what? They pooled their resources for the good of the organization. They didn't flaunt it. Who knew what judge they controlled, what politician they owned, what cop they were paying off? It wasn't something that was talked about, you know? The guy who can sit in the back, in the dark, and wield that kind of power, that was a real mobster. Bruno was the boss and he kept them all in line. What did he have over them? It was that code, that honor. Omertà. It kept them together. They believed in that. That's what's missing now."

Bruno was killed in 1980. A year later he was succeeded by Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, a paranoid despot who assumed control in 1981 and over the next ten years bankrupted Bruno's organization. Scarfo and more than a dozen other top Mob figures are now in jail, serving long-term federal prison sentences as a result of a series of prosecutions that began in 1987. But their legacy continues, carried on by sons, brothers and nephews who still hang out on the street corners and in the clubhouses that are the nerve centers of the organization.

"That's the biggest difference," Zappile says. "Today you've got these kids. They see the movies. They see Joe Pesci. They think that's what it's all about."

The kids. In South Philadelphia, it always comes back to the kids.

•

If there is a Mob prince in Philadelphia today it is Joey Merlino, the son of former Scarfo family underboss Salvatore Merlino. "Joey knows all the moves," says Nicholas "Nicky Crow" Caramandi, a former Scarfo family soldier and one of the first in a long list of Mob turncoats whose testimony brought down the Scarfo organization in the late Eighties. "His father and his uncle were both involved. He grew up with it. Plus, the kid always had a lot of balls."

Joey Merlino had one shot to go legit. As a teenager he worked for a horse trainer. Short, wiry, with great balance and arm strength, Merlino was soon a good apprentice jockey. His attorney now says Merlino outgrew the job and had to give up a promising career.

His uncle, in a recent interview from prison, tells a different story. "He was good," said Lawrence Merlino, who is now a cooperating government witness. "When he was 16 or 17 he was one of the leading apprentice jockeys. We used to go watch him race. Scarfo liked the kid. He knew he had a lot of guts and he wanted him with us. He used to go down to Maryland when Joey was racing there. Nicky would take him out for crabs. He told the kid that horse racing wasn't the life for him. It was dirty mucking stables, and he could get hurt." It was odd advice from a Mob boss who used violence as a management tool; his eight-year reign was marked by more than two dozen Mob murders.

Joey Merlino's father and uncle climbed the Mafia career ladder with Scarfo, both assuming positions of authority once Little Nicky became boss. Salvatore Merlino was the hands-on supervisor of the organization in South Philadelphia. Lawrence Merlino, who operated a construction company in Margate City, New Jersey, was a Mob capo who provided the organization with an entrée into the casino gambling boom of the early Eighties.

Early in 1987, Scarfo, the elder Merlinos and many others were jailed on a series of charges ranging from extortion and conspiracy to first-degree murder. They have been in prison ever since. When the older generation was sent away, Joey Merlino got his big chance.

•

Cops like Zappile refer to Joey Merlino as a "snot-nosed punk," but in certain underworld circles he is feared, if not admired, for his guts and swaggering street-corner style. Investigators are convinced that Merlino was behind the Schuylkill Expressway ambush, but have been unable, thus far, to prove it. In fact, Joey Merlino had built his reputation long before the bullets started flying.

Dark-haired and handsome, with brooding eyes, Merlino looked, dressed and acted the part of a wiseguy. He and his associates--the sons, brothers and nephews of convicted Scarfo crime-family members--hung out at the best spots in the city. They could be spotted in the funky joints along South Street and at the trendy bars, restaurants and nightclubs that sprang up along the Delaware River waterfront. Merlino was the accepted leader of the group. And because of his father, he also had the ear of some established, older Mob figures. With a foot in each camp, he was positioned to become a major player in the changing Philadelphia underworld.

He also had a certain flair that attracted both young and old. There is a story, confirmed indirectly by Merlino himself, about a Christmas party held two years ago at a beauty salon in South Philadelphia where he and some of his friends used to go for manicures. Merlino had arranged for an associate in the catering business to put out a spread--lunch meats, cheeses, fruit, bread, desserts--and all day long customers who came in were invited to join the feast. At one point, several young black kids from a nearby neighborhood drifted in and began eyeing the food. The owner of the beauty shop saw them and started making up platters for them. Then Merlino stepped in.

"What are you doin'?" he said to the owner. "That's not the way it's done."

Merlino pulled a wad of cash from his pocket and proceeded to hand a $20 bill to each of the seven or eight kids.

"This is how it's done," he said with a smile. "Merry Christmas."

"Joey was the kind of kid, if he had $5000 in his pocket, he'd go out and spend $10,000," said Richie Barone, a government witness who fingered Merlino in a $352,000 armored-truck heist.

On the eve of their trial, Barone cut a deal with the prosecution and Joey was left to stand alone. Convicted and sentenced to four years in prison, he politely told U.S. District Court Judge Norma Shapiro, "Thanks for a fair trial." Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Goldman sought a stiff sentence for Merlino, arguing that the mobster saw the prison term as the price of doing business. Merlino's attitude, he said, was "all you get is a couple of years in prison."

In fact, Merlino served a little more than two years behind bars. The money has never been recovered.

•

John Stanfa emerged as the new Mob boss while Joey Merlino was away. Like Merlino, he brought legitimate Mafia credentials to the table, although his pedigree was from a different time and place. Stanfa came to this country in 1964 from Sicily where, the Pennsylvania Crime Commission would later note, two brothers and a brother-in-law were members of the Mafia. He arrived in New York with a letter of introduction to Mob boss Carlo Gambino. Gambino then asked his good friend, Angelo Bruno, if he had anything for Stanfa to do in Philadelphia. Bruno welcomed the newcomer. Stanfa started a small construction company--his specialty was brick and masonry work--and was listed by law enforcement officials at the time as a low-level, fringe player in the Bruno organization.

And that's what he remained until the night of March 21, 1980, when he was asked to drive Bruno home from dinner at Cous' Little Italy, a popular, Mob-run South Philadelphia restaurant. To this day, no one but the killer is certain how the plot unfolded and how Stanfa was in position to drive the don home that night. What is certain is that as Stanfa pulled his car in front of Bruno's row house, a man wearing a raincoat walked out of the shadows on the corner, put a shotgun to the passenger-side window and blew a hole in the back of Angelo Bruno's head. That's when the Philadelphia branch of La Cosa Nostra began to careen out of control.

In rapid succession, the mobsters suspected of being behind the Bruno murder turned up dead, targeted by both Bruno loyalists in Philadelphia and the Mob hierarchy in New York which, in a display of understandable self-interest, decided it could not condone the murder of a sitting Mafia boss. Of those linked to the plot, only Stanfa managed to survive the bloodletting that followed. He disappeared after being indicted for perjury while testifying before a federal grand jury investigating the Bruno hit. Nine months later he was discovered living under an assumed name in a small town outside of Baltimore, working at a restaurant linked to the Gambino organization. Brought back to Philadelphia, he was convicted of perjury and sentenced to eight years in prison. He served more than six years and was released in 1987.

When Stanfa left prison, powerful underworld forces in both New York and Sicily interceded on his behalf. Several Philadelphia mobsters who are now cooperating with federal authorities tell the same tale. At first leaders of the Gambino family, as a favor to their Sicilian brethren, prevailed upon Scarfo and other Bruno loyalists to win a reprieve of the underworld death sentence placed on Stanfa's head. The deal was that Stanfa would return to Sicily after his release. Then John Gotti asked Scarfo to allow Stanfa to stay in this country. So it was that Stanfa went to New York after getting out of prison.

By that point, the Philadelphia Mob was in disarray. Scarfo's bloody reign brought death, destruction and disorganization. Not only were two dozen mobsters killed--including a generation of potential leaders--but nearly as many were convicted and sentenced to lengthy terms behind bars. Even more troubling, however, was the fact that six "made" members of the organization had become cooperating witnesses. Scarfo's slash-and-burn mentality had driven some of his closest associates to the witness stand, the only viable refuge for anyone who had a falling-out with the murderous crime boss. The repercussions would eventually be felt throughout the underworld.

Stanfa, born and raised in the old country, a product of the old ways, was sent down from New York to fix things up. He set about reorganizing around a small group of local mobsters whom he could trust. The idea was to get back to the way Bruno had run things, to avoid publicity and attention, to focus on making money rather than making news.

But too much time had passed and too many things had happened. After all, this was Philadelphia, not Palermo. There was a new generation out there. Stanfa just never figured on a problem from the kids. He never realized that for them, La Cosa Nostra begins and ends in the neighborhood.

"From the beginning, they perceived John as an outsider," said a local gambler familiar with the current underworld crisis and who, in the interest of his security, asked not to be identified. "They didn't look at it as a Mafia thing. They thought of it as a South Philly thing. Their fathers and uncles were all in jail and this guy comes rolling into town and they thought, Who the hell is he?

"Stanfa has a meeting in this restaurant with Joey Merlino and some of the other kids, and he thinks he's got everything settled. But he didn't know who he was dealing with. These kids, they turn on you in a minute. And the funny thing is, if the kids had listened, all this bullshit could have been avoided. Now, it's all falling apart. See, they're not global. They don't have the long view. To them, it's their corner and he's trying to take over."

The first signs of trouble came in January 1992, when a gambling dispute erupted over control of the weekly street tax bookmakers were supposed to pay. An old-time Mob bookmaker named Felix Bocchino was collecting for Stanfa, but some Merlino associates were apparently trying to horn in on the action. Bocchino was gunned down in an early-morning ambush near his home.

In retaliation, two shotgun-wielding assassins set a trap for Michael Ciancaglini, one of the so-called Young Turks running with Joey Merlino. Ciancaglini, 30, was walking home one night when the two hit men jumped out of a car parked near his house. The young mobster took cover, narrowly beating the gunmen to his front door. Shotgun blasts peppered the front of the brick row home and shattered a window, but Ciancaglini escaped unharmed.

Ciancaglini, like Merlino, was the son of an imprisoned mobster. His father was Joe "Chang" Ciancaglini, the enforcer for the Bruno organization who later became a capo under Scarfo. Joe Chang had three sons. The oldest, John, was doing a seven-year stint in federal prison on an extortion rap. Michael was the youngest. In between was Joe Jr., who was not as tough as Michael, but was said to be considerably smarter. Young Joe sided with Stanfa and, in a move designed to stanch the bloodletting and bridge the generation gap, Stanfa elevated him to the rank of underboss. "Joe was supposed to be the bridge between Stanfa and the kids," said the gambler. "It made a lot of sense."

The fragile peace held for several months and solidified in September 1992 when Stanfa held a formal "making ceremony" and inducted five new members into his organization--including Joey Merlino (who had just been paroled in the armored-truck case), Michael Ciancaglini and Biaggio Adornetto, a young Sicilian newly arrived in the city. Adornetto, one of three Stanfa confidants now cooperating with the government, told prosecutors he couldn't understand why Stanfa was making Merlino and Mike Ciancaglini because he knew the Mob boss didn't trust them. As Stanfa was taking him to the making ceremony, Adornetto said he asked about this and Stanfa said that he wanted to keep them close, but that he knew he would eventually have to kill them.

In the South Philadelphia underworld, the game of intrigue intensified. Behind the scenes, both sides were lining up their shots. Secretly recorded conversations, made public after Stanfa and 23 others were indicted on March 17, 1994, show the Mob boss ranting and raving about Merlino and his young associates. They didn't understand, he said. They had "no respect." He talked of importing hit men from Sicily. He threatened to take a knife and cut out the tongue of one Merlino loyalist. "And we'll send it to the wife," he said.

When the peace was broken, however, the shots came from the other direction. Joe Ciancaglini, Stanfa's underboss, his bridge to the Young Turks, was gunned down early on the morning of March 2, 1993. Two masked gunmen entered the garage of a luncheonette he owned just down the street from Stanfa's Continental Foods and opened fire. Ciancaglini was hit five times in the face and neck. He survived, but barely. Today, his face disfigured, his hearing and speech impaired, Joe Ciancaglini is no longer able to function as underboss. The shooting, which seemingly pitted brother against brother, ended any thought of reconciliation. Stanfa's attempt to merge the young and old factions into one cohesive crime family was over.

Angry, frustrated and bent on revenge, Stanfa began making plans to kill Merlino and his supporters, and FBI bugs picked up much of his plotting on tape. Some of the most fruitful listening devices were planted in the Camden, New Jersey offices of Stanfa's criminal defense attorney, Salvatore Avena. Federal authorities later charged that Stanfa used the pretext of visiting with his attorney--and the cover of lawyer-client privilege--to meet with other mobsters.

Two months after the Joe Ciancaglini shooting, Stanfa and Sergio Battaglia, a young mob associate, met in Avena's office to plan the murder of Merlino, Michael Ciancaglini and Gaeton Lucibello, another Merlino loyalist. In a burst of confidence, Battaglia began discussing how to dispose of the bodies once the hits were carried out. He suggested that the remains be dumped outside the Philadelphia area. "Maybe we'll take one to New York, one down to Delaware," Battaglia offered. "We spread them out."

Then Stanfa had a better idea, perhaps drawing on his background as a mason and bricklayer. "No, no," he said in his fractured, heavily accented English. "What we do, we put a little concrete. They got already-mixed concrete. As soon as we do it, we put [the body] in the trunk, at night. This way the concrete hardens and we'll go dump them."

Talk then shifted to the proper technique for a shot to the head. Both Battaglia and Stanfa agreed that a bullet should enter at an angle. It was likely to destroy more brain matter that way.

"Over here," said Stanfa, evidently gesturing at the prime point of entry. "It's the best. Right behind the ear."

The next day Stanfa and two other associates were recorded planning a hit at the South Philadelphia clubhouse where Merlino, Mike Ciancaglini and Lucibello were hanging out.

"I don't want to mess it up," Stanfa told the others. "All three, they gotta go."

•

In underworld and law enforcement circles, the smart money was on Stanfa. "Joey's living on borrowed time," said one detective. "He's a walking dead man and he knows it," said another. Federal authorities warned Merlino, Ciancaglini and several other young Mob figures, but the kids just laughed it off.

On August 5, 1993 they stopped laughing. Ciancaglini and Merlino met late that morning in their clubhouse at Sixth and Catharine. The two-story brick building was formerly the storefront office of Greenpeace, the environmental group, whose sign still hung over the door. Now it was Merlino's headquarters in the war against Stanfa.

The place was under constant surveillance. The FBI trained a hidden camera on the front door. Arrivals and departures were clocked and recorded. Merlino and Ciancaglini walked out a little after one P.M. and headed, on foot, up Sixth Street and off camera. As they walked, a white Ford Taurus crept slowly up the street behind them. Less than a block from the clubhouse door, the car stopped and two men jumped out, opening fire. Ciancaglini slumped to the sidewalk, dead. Merlino turned to run and took a shot in the buttocks. He made it back to the clubhouse as the Taurus sped away.

Five days later, Michael Ciancaglini's funeral Mass was held at the Epiphany of Our Lord Roman Catholic Church at 11th and Jackson. He left the church in a box that day. Joey Merlino walked out leaning on a cane. That about summed up law enforcement's view of the young, renegade faction of the Mob. Stanfa was in control. Or so they thought. Three weeks later, the Mob boss and his son were ducking for cover on the Schuylkill Expressway and the blood was flowing again.

In the weeks that followed, three more mobsters were hit. One, a Merlino associate named Frank Baldino, was killed, shot behind the wheel of his Cadillac. Police, concerned about the wanton disregard for innocent bystanders in both the Schuylkill ambush and the Baldino shooting, started a street-level crackdown. Eight gangsters were pinched for weapons offenses, and the cops confiscated various handguns, mostly .38s and .380-caliber revolvers found under the seats and in the glove compartments of some of the cars that were stopped.

Merlino remained number one on Stanfa's hit list, targeted in a series of bizarre murder plots. A sniper staked out the apartment of a woman with whom Merlino sometimes lived, but he didn't show up. A bomb was planted under his car, but it failed to go off. It was planted again, and again the detonation device malfunctioned. In an even more ludicrous plan, Stanfa hoped to use a go-go dancer to poison Merlino. The woman, who did not agree to carry out the plot, was told to dress up and go to one of the nightclubs Merlino and his friends frequented. She was supposed to get close to the group, and then drop cyanide into Merlino's drink and the drinks of anyone who was with him, said a federal prosecutor.

The FBI probably saved Joey Merlino's life by taking him off the street before that plan could be carried out. Merlino was supposed to be working for an aluminum-siding company as a salesman and, according to parole terms in the 1990 armored-truck robbery case, was prohibited from associating with known felons. The FBI camera trained on the clubhouse door at Sixth and Catharine told a different story. At a parole violation hearing, federal prosecutor Robert Goldman documented Merlino's presence in the clubhouse on days when his work records indicated he was out giving estimates for installation work. It also showed him in the presence of wiseguys. Judge Norma Shapiro sentenced Merlino to three years in jail.

In March 1994 Stanfa and 23 others were indicted in a sweeping federal racketeering case and they, too, were taken out of circulation. The charges, a conspiracy built around the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, include the murders of Michael Ciancaglini and Frank Baldino, plus nearly a dozen conspiracy and attempted-murder charges--including the various plots to get Joey Merlino--along with one kidnapping charge and numerous counts of extortion and gambling. Stanfa, if convicted, faces life in prison. Most of his top associates are looking at potential prison terms of 20 to 40 years.

Three top associates, including the hit men in the Mike Ciancaglini killing, are now cooperating and are expected to testify when the case comes to trial later this year or early in 1995. In addition, there are hours of taped conversations in which Stanfa and several of his co-defendants discuss murder plots, extortions and various other racketeering gambits. The case is an echo of the 1987 RICO indictment that sent Scarfo and 15 of his top associates to prison. It is also similar to the series of Mob indictments that put Gotti and the leaders of other New York crime families behind bars. And it is yet another nail in the coffin of the Philadelphia Mob, more evidence that La Cosa Nostra is dying.

Missing from the indictment, however, are Joey Merlino and most of the members of his Mob faction. They are said to be the targets of a separate federal investigation, one built around the Schuylkill Expressway ambush and several other acts of violence aimed at the Stanfa organization. Whether the feds have enough to bring an indictment, however, remains to be seen. Thus far, nobody from Joey's side of the street is talking. Nobody is cooperating. Nobody has been before the grand jury.

This has surprised no one. The kids all grew up together. They hung out around Tenth and Jackson. That was their corner. They fought the guys from Tenth and Porter or Third and Wolf, but never each other.

They know about loyalty.

It's a neighborhood thing.

Mob Scene

Who's Who in Philadelphia

The Bosses

Angelo Bruno--Philadelphia Mob boss whose March 21, 1980 shotgun murder set in motion the bloody internecine struggle that continues today.

Philip "Chicken Man" Testa--Bruno's underboss and successor, killed in a March 15, 1981 bomb blast.

Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo--Testa's consigliere and successor. One of the most violent Mafia bosses in America. Many mobsters died during his ten-year reign of terror. Currently serving consecutive 14-year and 55-year prison terms following federal convictions on conspiracy and racketeering charges.

John Stanfa--Sicilian-born mobster who took over the Philadelphia crime family in 1991. Backed by the Gambino family in New York and by Mafia leaders in Palermo, but unable to control younger members of the local organization.

The Players

Joseph "Chang" Ciancaglini--Bruno enforcer who became capo, or captain, under Scarfo. Currently serving a 45-year sentence on federal racketeering charges.

Salvatore Merlino--Scarfo underboss. Currently serving a 45-year sentence on racketeering charges.

Lawrence Merlino--Salvatore's brother. Became a cooperating witness after convictions on racketeering and murder charges. Now in the protective-custody wing of a federal prison.

Nicholas "Nicky Crow" Cara-Mandi--In 1986 he became one of the first "made" members of the Philadelphia Mob to turn witness for the state by testifying against Scarfo and dozens of others. A series of trials based in part on his testimony brought down the Scarfo organization.

Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino--Son of Salvatore Merlino and leader of a young, renegade faction of the Mob that is bucking Stanfa's rule. Survived an August 5, 1993 street-corner ambush.

Joseph "Joey Chang" Ciancaglini Jr.--Son of Scarfo crime family capo Joe "Chang" Ciancaglini. Named underboss by Stanfa. Wounded in a March 2, 1993 ambush at a South Philadelphia luncheonette he operated.

Michael "Mike Chang" Cianca-Glini--Younger brother of Joey Chang. Aligned with Joey Merlino against Stanfa. Killed in an August 5, 1993 street-corner ambush.

Joseph Stanfa--Son of Mob boss. Wounded in an August 31, 1993 highway ambush.

Gaeton Lucibello--A member of the Merlino faction, targeted for death by Stanfa.

Sergio Battaglia--Stanfa loyalist recorded on secret tapes discussing the right way to pop a bullet into an enemy's head.

Frank Baldino--Merlino associate killed in the parking lot of a South Philadelphia diner on September 17, 1993.

"'You've got these kids. They see the movies. They see Joe Pesci. They think that's what it's all about.'"