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George Anastasia <\/p>\nLast month\u2019s Netflix docuseries Mob War: Philadelphia vs the Mafia portrayed the internecine Cosa Nostra mob war in Philadelphia in the early 1990s between the South Philadelphia \u201cYoung Turks,\u201d reportedly led by Joseph \u201cSkinny Joey\u201d Merlino, and John Stanfa, the Sicilian-born boss of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family.<\/p>\n
The young mobsters, the sons and nephews of the previous generation\u2019s Cosa Nostra mobsters under then-Philadelphia mob boss Nicodemo \u201cLittle Nicky\u201d Scarfo, were South Philly \u201ccorner boys\u201d who bristled under the strict leadership of a Sicilian boss to whom they felt no loyalty.<\/p>\n
At the time I covered the gang war as a crime reporter and columnist for the South Philadelphia weekly newspapers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I spoke to several mob guys on both sides, some of whom I\u2019ve known since childhood. They told me what was happening, but I could not use their names as it would surely lead to them being murdered. (I was later able to interview Philadelphia Cosa Nostra underboss Philip Leonetti and Philadelphia Cosa Nostra boss Ralph Natale after they became cooperating government witnesses).<\/p>\n
I also knew and interviewed many of the people who were featured in the Netflix docuseries.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of the principal people featured in the Netflix docuseries was Charlotte Lang, the former FBI organized crime squad leader in Philadelphia. She was my quest when I was an on-air host and producer of Inside Government,\u00a0a public affairs radio program that aired on WPEN AM and WMGK FM on Sunday mornings in the Philadelphia area,\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lang, who then looked more like a blonde mid-western schoolteacher than a racket-busting fed, noted that the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra members were not as sophisticated as the New York City mobsters she previously investigated during the famous Rudy Gulliani-led Cosa Nostra \u201cFive Families Commission\u201d case.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe South Philly gangsters deal in traditional Cosa Nostra money-making crimes, such as loan sharking, illegal gambling, extortion and drug trafficking, but they are not involved with the type of high-level corruption and complicated criminal schemes that we see New York gangsters engaged in,\u201d Lang said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
George Anastasia, the author and former crime reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, also appeared prominently in the Netflix documentary. I\u2019ve interviewed George Anastasia several times over the years, and I\u2019ve reviewed his fine books about organized crime for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington Times.<\/p>\n
George Anastasia <\/p>\n
I first encountered him back in 1998\u00a0when I went to hear him speak about his then just published book, The Goodfella Tapes: The True Story of How the FBI\u00a0Recorded a\u00a0 Mob War and Brought Down a Mafia Don.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0book is about how the FBI secretly recorded the mobsters during an internecine mob war, and brought down the local crime boss, John Stanfa.<\/p>\n
George Anastasia made an appearance at Borders bookstore in Center City Philadelphia. He read passages from his book and fielded questions from the crowd of about 30 people.<\/p>\n
Like his two previous outstanding books on the Philly mob,\u00a0Blood and Honor\u00a0and\u00a0Mobfather, South Philadelphia is featured so prominently in\u00a0The Goodfella Tapes\u00a0that it\u2019s practically a character.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Philadelphia mob is probably the most dysfunctional crime family in America,\u201d I recall Anastasia saying. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of\u00a0The Simpsons\u00a0of the underworld.\u201d<\/p>\n
How it got that way, he said, is what the book is all about.<\/p>\n
Anastasia talked about the 1993-95 mob war in and around South Philadelphia, noting that one failed hit man used the wrong size shells in a shotgun (which was right out of Jimmy Breslin\u2019s great comic novel\u00a0The Gang That Couldn\u2019t Shoot Straight) and how another mob guy called off a hit because he had to report to his parole officer.<\/p>\n
Anastasia explained that\u00a0one side was old world Sicilian and the other side was born and bred South Philadelphians, the offspring of the previous mob leadership.<\/p>\n
And the Feds got it all down on tape.<\/p>\n
A minor gambling investigation led to the bugging of a law office in New Jersey, where the mob guys met secretly (and they thought safely) to discuss mob gossip, philosophy and tactics. Over the course of two years, the FBI recorded 2,000 conversations.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoodfellas don\u2019t sue goodfellas,\u201d\u00a0one mob philosopher advised a\u00a0mob associate and potential litigant as the FBI listened in. \u201cGoodfellas kill goodfellas.\u201d<\/p>\n
The book offers a good number of other insightful comments as well.<\/p>\n
Anastasia said he became interested in organized crime having been born in South Philly and the fact that his grandfather came from Sicily. \u201cI was fascinated because it\u2019s the dark side of the Italian-American experience,\u201d Anastasia said.<\/p>\n
He began covering crime when he was assigned by the\u00a0Philadelphia Inquirer\u00a0to cover Atlantic City at the time of the gambling referendum in 1976. There was much talk about keeping the mob out, but as Anastasia noted, they were already there. He later covered more and more mob-related stories.<\/p>\n
As I\u2019m half-Italian and grew up and still live in South Philly\u2019s \u201cLittle Italy,\u201d I asked him how he responded to criticism from Italians that his extensive coverage of the \u201cdark side\u201d as he put it, offered a negative image of Italians, the vast majority of whom were not criminals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese guys are taking the positive values of the Italian American experience; honor, family and loyalty and bastardizing them for their own end. I think you should shine a light on that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Anastasia said he took great pride in the positive contributions that Italians have made to America and to the world.<\/p>\n
The docuseries is still streaming on Netflix, and I recommend that anyone interested in Cosa Nostra organized crime history watch it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Paul Davis\u2019 Crime Beat column appears here each week. He can be reached at pauldavisoncrime.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last month\u2019s Netflix docuseries Mob War: Philadelphia vs the Mafia portrayed the internecine Cosa Nostra mob war in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[31,8884,8881,8882,12328,11250,69,71,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-26553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-joey-merlino","10":"tag-john-stanfa","11":"tag-mafia","12":"tag-nicky-scarfo","13":"tag-organized-crime","14":"tag-philadelphia","15":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","16":"tag-philadelphia-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}