The rivalry between mobsters John Stanfa and Joey Merlino might’ve started as an internal power struggle, but it didn’t stay within the Mafia. Their conflict spilled into the streets of Philadelphia in the 1990s, as men aligned with either camp unleashed gunfire on quiet residential streets and the Schuylkill Expressway in broad daylight. By the end of the decade, several people were dead and both mobsters were incarcerated — one of them still is.

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“Mob War: Philadelphia vs. The Mafia,” streaming Wednesday on Netflix, examines the infamous escalation between Stanfa and Merlino. Their power struggle sparked after the 1986 arrest of the Philly mob’s previous leader Nicky Scarfo, a man who once stabbed a longshoreman to death over a booth in Oregon Diner. With Scarfo locked up, the local crime syndicate needed a new leader. The Five Families chose Stanfa, but others preferred Merlino.

“Stanfa is this old school guy from Sicily who believed in the old values of the mob, in loyalty,” said Raissa Botterman, who directed the Netflix docuseries. “And Joey Merlino was a local Philly, Italian American young man, at the time from the ’90s, probably closer to what we know now of celebrity culture.

“It’s the beginning of celebrity culture. It’s an era of more individualism. People are a bit flashier. So, in a way, that conflict was always going to be particularly brutal. They’re really two worlds colliding.”

Botterman retells the saga over three 45-minute episodes that track the war’s pivotal moments — the initial killing of mafioso Felix Bocchino, the attempted hit on Merlino at his social club on 6th and Catharine streets (he survived, but his righthand man Michael Ciancaglini didn’t), the drive-by shooting of Stanfa and his son Joseph on the Schuylkill Expressway (both lived, but Joseph took a bullet to his jaw) and other assaults. Through interviews with former FBI and Philadelphia police investigators, the series also reveals how law enforcement ultimately nabbed the ringleaders. Stanfa was indicted with 23 others in a massive mob sweep that landed him in prison for the rest of his life, while Merlino spent 12 years behind bars for racketeering. He now operates Skinny Joey’s Cheesesteaks at 3020 S. Broad St. and denies being part of the Mafia.

“The main thing that you realize is the relentless work that it takes to build these cases, to investigate them,” Botterman said. “The level of evidence that the government has to come with means that you have all these people working on the ground day and night, listening to these wiretaps and trying to piece these really complex cases together.”

Neither Stanfa nor Merlino participated in “Mob War,” but some of their former associates did. Botterman lends significant screen time to John Veasey, the former Stanfa foot soldier who later testified against him. Veasey’s incredible tales include a comedy of errors following the attempted hit on Merlino; the way he tells it, he caught his own hand on fire while trying to burn his getaway car, and when he visited the hospital for treatment over a “barbecue accident,” the police caught him. Former mobsters John Alite and George Martorano also provide color commentary, as do Ruthann Seccio, the former mistress of mob boss Ralph Natale, and Angelo Lutz, the chef who once frequented Merlino’s South Philly hub. (He now runs the mob-themed Collingswood restaurant the Kitchen Consigliere.)

Botterman, who previously produced TV specials or series on Henri Matisse and the Tower of London, admits she only knew “the basics” of the Philly mob war when she signed onto the project. Now, she’s excited to bring the complicated saga to a wider audience.

“We got amazing access and I think it’s quite rare to be so close to the ground and have all these people from all different sides telling your story,” she said. “Also, at a more visual level, we really pushed the envelope when it came to the reconstruction and trying to do justice to the high-octane action that takes place in this story. So it was really a joy to make, and I hope people will enjoy watching as much as I enjoyed making it.”

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