In 1976 The Philadelphia Inquirer sent reporter George Anastasia to Atlantic City to cover the beginning of the casino gambling era in the state. In addition to reporting on what he calls the “unique form of urban renewal” brought about by the building of  casinos in an economically depressed city, Anastasia was also told to keep an eye on the Philadelphia mob.

The debate in Atlantic City prior to the approved referendum over casinos included the fear that legalized gambling would bring in organized crime. But, as Anastasia notes in his book, Mob Files: Mobsters, Molls and Murder (Camino Books), the mob was already there.

Anastasia, a veteran crime reporter and author of several good books on organized crime, such as Blood and Honor and The Last Gangster, has complied some of his best and most interesting newspaper and magazine pieces on the mob in this book.

The son of Sicilian immigrants who settled in South Philadelphia, Anastasia began to cover Philly’s La Cosa Nostra crime family more and more after the 1980 shooting death of Philly mob boss Angelo Bruno.

Bruno ran a quiet, highly efficient organization that controlled crime in Philadelphia and South Jersey. Bruno’s murder set off a  mob war that left bodies in the street and grabbed the public attention. Anastasia writes that Bruno’s death was a seminal event in the demise of the Philadelphia crime family.

The mob became Anastasia’s “beat” in the 1990’s. He tells a remarkable story about a mob guy who complained to a young woman who worked with the reporter. The complaint was that Anastasia always took the government’s side in his reporting. Anastasia told the woman to have the mob guy give him a call. He did.

Anastasia began juxtaposing the comments of an “underworld source” alongside those of  law enforcement’s in his pieces. The mob guy loved it and more mobsters started calling, including Joey Merlino, who rose to be the reputed underboss of the mob.

The mob guys after Bruno were not like Mafioso of old, who kept low profiles befitting members of a secret criminal society. Anastasia reports that the new breed were South Philly “corner boys.”  They were third-generation Italian-Americans, the sons and nephews of the previous generation of mobsters. They were loyal to each other but not to a centuries-old tradition of crime.

They were media-savvy and they liked the publicity. When Merlino was asked by a journalist about a reported $500,000 contract out on his life, Merlino shrugged and said “Give me the half million and I’ll shoot myself.”

I’m part Italian and a former corner boy raised in South Philly a decade ahead of most of these new mob guys. I can attest that very few Italian-Americans are involved in organized crime, but I believe that Anastasia’s coverage of those who are, is  first-rate.

His mob stories are brutal, tragic and funny. They read like Philly’s equivalent to the New York hoods in Scorsese’s great film, Goodfellas.

More on the Philly Mob Files in my next blog.

Paul Davis also writes an espionage blog for GreatHistory.com. His website is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site/.

About the Author: Paul Davis has been a student of crime and espionage since he was a 12-year-old aspiring writer growing up in South Philadelphia. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy when he was 17 in 1970 and served on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War. He performed security work as a young sailor and later as a Defense Department civilian employee. As a writer he has covered crime, espionage, terrorism and the military for newspapers, magazines and Internet publications.

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