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An excerpt from Mafia Prince: Inside America’s Most Violent
Crime Family And The Bloody Fall Of La Cosa Nostra
“LITTLE NICKY” & “CRAZY PHIL”
December 16, 1979
It was a cold winter afternoon, the type of day where the frigid
air can literally take a man’s breath away. But on this day it
wouldn’t be Mother Nature who would perform this daunting
task, it would be a 26 year old mob killer with ice in his veins and
orders to kill named Philip Leonetti, whose nickname “Crazy
Phil” said it all.
As the unmistakable sounds of the powerful and unforgiving
white-capped waves pounding the shoreline a few feet away
punctuated the crisp air on this dreary day, there was no force
more powerful and unforgiving, more omnipresent in Philip
By Philip Leonetti
With Scott Burnstein and Christopher Graziano
Leonetti’s life than that of his 50 year old uncle, Nicodemo
Scarfo, the man who had raised him like a son after his own father
had abandoned him as a child and had turned him into a heartless
stone-cold killer.
Scarfo, who was nicknamed “Little Nicky”, stood 5’5 and
weighed a mere 135 pounds, may have been small in stature, but
he had earned a reputation for committing acts of unspeakable
violence that had made him a giant in the criminal underworld.
By 1979 he was the Philadelphia mob’s fastest rising star and
had become the de facto ‘Boss of the Boardwalk’ in Atlantic City,
which, with the advent of casino gambling a year before, had
become a boomtown for the mob.
His beloved nephew Philip Leonetti had become his right
hand man, his most trusted aide and his most able killer. In
the late 70’s, in the burgeoning Atlantic City underworld, the
ground shook when and where “Little Nicky” and “Crazy Phil”
walked.
Equally feared and respected, it was common knowledge to
those doing business in Atlantic City and those who wanted to do
business in Atlantic City that Scarfo and Leonetti were not to be
fucked with.
So when a young mob associate named Vincent Falcone drew
the extremely volatile Scarfo’s ire, “Little Nicky” decided that
the penalty would be death and that Philip “Crazy Phil” Leonetti
would be the executioner.
“Come on Vince, let’s make some drinks,” said Philip
Leonetti to Vincent Falcone, as the two men stood in the kitchen
of a friends beachfront home in Margate, an upscale beach
community a few short miles south of Atlantic City.
Inside the living room, just a few feet away, sat Nicky
Scarfo, his reading glasses perched low on his nose, his Italian
leather shoes resting comfortably on a coffee table as he perused
the Sunday edition of the Atlantic City Press while watching the
Philadelphia Eagles battle the Houston Oilers, led by future Hall
of Fame running back Earl Campbell.
“Vince, bring me a cutty and some water,” said Scarfo in his
trademark high-pitched voice, as Falcone set out two glasses for
the Boss, one to be filled with Cutty Sark, the blended scotch
whiskey favored by Scarfo, and the other to be filled with water
that “Little Nicky” used to dilute his drink.
Joining the trio of Scarfo, Leonetti and Falcone on this
fateful afternoon were two aspiring mobsters, young wannabe
wise guys who, like Leonetti and Falcone, were members of
Nicky Scarfo’s Atlantic City crew. The five men had gathered
to have a pre-holiday celebration; Christmas after all was just
nine days away.
But there was nothing festive about what would happen next.
After placing the bottle of scotch that his uncle had
requested on the kitchen table, the 26 year old Leonetti
nodded towards Falcone and said, “Vince, get some ice,” as the
unsuspecting Falcone nodded in agreement and walked towards
the refrigerator, turning his back to Leonetti and the others as
he did.
Immediately, Leonetti reached into his black leather jacket
and pulled out a small .32 caliber handgun that had been tucked
in his waistband. Without hesitation he moved swiftly behind
Falcone and pressed the handgun to the back of his head, directly
behind his right ear and squeezed the trigger.
BOOM.
Propelled from the impact of the blast, Falcone flew forward
and collided with the refrigerator causing his soon to be lifeless
body to awkwardly land on his back as a pool of blood begin to
turn the cheap linoleum floor a dark shade of crimson.
Nicky Scarfo, apparently no longer interested in the Eagles
game, got up from the couch and without saying a word, walked
into the kitchen and kneeled down next to Falcone’s mortally
wounded body, pressing his ear to Falcone’s chest and listened
for a heartbeat.
“He’s still alive,” Scarfo said to Leonetti, who was standing
over Falcone’s body, the gun still firmly gripped in his right
hand , “Give him another one,” said Scarfo, “Right here”, as he
pointed to Falcone’s heart.
As “Little Nicky” knelt beside the fallen Vincent Falcone,
“Crazy Phil” pumped another shot into his heart at point blank
range, BOOM, causing his body to violently jerk as the bullet
ripped through his chest, immediately ending his life.
“The big shot’s dead,” said a jubilant Nicky Scarfo, rising
to his feet, belittling the dead man as a “piece of shit cocksucker”
as he did.
Philip Leonetti, still holding the pistol, turned to one of
the other men in the kitchen, a close friend of Falcone’s, and
fixated an icy stare on him, “He was a no good motherfucker,”
Leonetti said, “I wish I could bring him back to life so I could
kill him again.”
It wasn’t the first time that Scarfo and Leonetti had killed
together and it wouldn’t be the last. Over the next decade there
would be twenty more killings.
Another half-dozen or so that pre-dated the Falcone
murder would punctuate their reign as two of the most notorious
gangsters of the twentieth century.
Three things figured prominently in many of the murders:
money, power and Atlantic City. Eventually “Little Nicky”
and “Crazy Phil” had them all; all the money, all the power and
absolute control over Atlantic City.
They had ascended from a lowly mob street-crew loaning
money to cash-strapped gamblers and shaking down two-bit
wise guys and had risen to the pantheon of organized crime;
they were the Boss and Underboss of the Philadelphia mob /
Atlantic City mob, the CEO’s of the nation’s bloodiest and
most ruthless mafia empire.
All good things usually come to an end and ten years after the
Falcone murder it was over.
But in many ways to Philip Leonetti it was just beginning.
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