In parts one and two of this series I wrote about George Anastasia’s Mob Files: Mobsters, Molls and Murder (Camino), The Philadelphia Inquirer reporter’s book on the Philadelphia-South Jersey La Cosa Nostra organized crime family.
The book is a collection of his newspaper coverage of what Anastasia calls the most dysfunctional crime family in the country. These street-level stories offer drama, comedy and tragedy that few fiction writers can match.
Anastasia interviewed mob guys’ wives, girlfriends and female criminal accomplices who are or were attracted to the life-style, the money and the notoriety of the mob world.
“Forget the movies,” the wife of the imprisoned mob underboss told Anastasia. “Forget the glamour and hype.”
She told the reporter that the mob life is no way to live, as you will inevitably end up in one of two places, jail or the cemetery.
Anastasia also tells the story of a young couple who were indistinguishable from other young couples living in suburbia in the mid-1990’s, yet this mob hit man and his former go-go dancer wife were involved in the bloody power struggle that left bodies strewn across South Philadelphia.
The couple, who are now in the witness protection program, told the reporter an incredible story. The hit man confessed to being involved in a number of mob murder conspiracies and to being the trigger man in the murder of a rival of then-mob boss John Stanfa.
Although she was not formally charged, authorities say the wife was implicated in a bizarre plot to poison rivals of Stanfa by placing cyanide in the drinks of the mob guys as they partied at Philly nightclubs. Like many of the mob’s outlandish plots, this one was never carried out.
Anastasia also wrote about plots and counterplots as the young South Philly “corner boys” took on the Sicilian-born Stanfa.
“They included ambushes that fizzled, car bombs that failed to go off, drive-by shootings that missed their targets and one point-blank shotgun assassination attempt that was botched when the weapon failed to discharge,” Anastasia writes in the book.
“Some of this is so crazy it would be funny if people weren’t getting killed,” Anastasia quotes then-Philadelphia Police chief inspector Richard Zappile.
Anastasia had access to the many hours of federal recordings of mob guys as they discussed crime, tradition and philosophy. The conversations shine a light on the thinking and actions of organized crime members.
“La Cosa Nostra is a beautiful way of life if we respect it,” a mob philosopher said to another mob guy as the FBI were listening in and recording the conversation.
“The way it’s supposed to be,” he added. “It’s not an instrument to make money.”
Yet, as Anastasia noted in his book, making money was the dominate topic of conversation heard in the many FBI-recorded conversations.
Anastasia wrote that the mob’s demise was due to its indiscriminate use of violence and lack of self-discipline, a lack of leadership, a loss of mob-style “family values,” narcotics and the sophisticated and coordinated investigations of the mob by federal, state and local law enforcement.
Paul Davis, who is a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, also writes an espionage blog for Greathistory.com. His web site address is http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/site/and his e-mail address is pauldavisoncrime@comcast.net.
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