Free Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family by Phil Leonetti, Scott Burnstein, Christopher Graziano Page B

me the whole time, those motherfuckers, but they tried to pin it on me anyway. They got a guy who worked at the trash dump where we did the killing to give a statement and identify me as the shooter. A couple weeks later the owner of the trash dump’s wife called Harold Garber, who was one of our lawyers and told him what had happened and that the cops had made the guy say that it was me and that he wanted to set the record straight and tell the truth that it wasn’t me. My uncle always hated the police, he called them all “no good dirty cocksuckers.”
                  Now this woman used to hang out at the old Penguin Club that my uncle owned with Tommy Butch. So Harold has her bring the guy to Vince Sausto’s insurance office and he takes a statement from him where he says is wasn’t me who did the killing, which it wasn’t. Now at the time the witness was being watched by two detectives from the prosecutors office who were protecting him from us. They were convinced that me and my uncle were going to kill this guy so he wouldn’t be able to testify against me. The cops thought he was going to do some insurance business with Vince, so they waited outside. They had no idea that Harold was inside the office and that the guy was coming to give a statement that would ultimately kill their case against me. The guy turned out to be a stand-up guy and just wanted to tell the truth.
    Based on the witness recantation, the murder charges against Philip Leonetti were dropped.
    Scarfo and Leonetti’s reputations were not only known in Atlantic City and Philadelphia, but in mob circles in North Jersey and New York, where guys like “Tony Bananas” Caponigro and Bobby Manna were updating their crews on what the gangsters in Atlantic City were up to.
    What was about to happen next would put them in a whole different stratosphere.
The Payback
    O NE OF NICKY SCARFO’S OLDEST FRIENDS AND TOP ASSOCIATES, NICHOLAS “NICK THE BLADE” VIRGILIO, HAD RECEIVED A 12-TO 15-YEAR SENTENCE FOR A 1972 KILLING THAT OCCURRED WHILE NICKY SCARFO WAS LOCKED UP IN YARDVILLE.
    From behind bars, Scarfo, through his nephew Philip Leonetti and attorney Harold Garber, had arranged for a $6,000 bribe to be paid to the judge on the Blade’s case in exchange for a lenient sentence.
    The deal had been brokered using a wheeler-dealer Atlantic City lawyer and shyster named Edwin “Eddie” Helfant, himself a part-time municipal court judge who was facing an indictment for fixing cases in the Somers Point Municipal Court. Helfant owned the Flamingo Hotel in Atlantic City where Philip Leonetti and Pepe Leva had gotten into a fight eight days before he was killed.
    Instead of paying off the judge in the Blade’s case, Helfant kept the money for himself and split it with a friend—an associate of Nicky Scarfo’s named Alvin Feldman. The Blade received a substantial prison sentence.
    The double-cross would eventually cost both Eddie Helfant and Alvin Feldman their lives.
                  Back in 1972, when my uncle was in Yardville and he found out what Judge Helfant and Alvin Feldman did to the Blade, he went nuts. He was furious. I’d never seen him this angry. Adding to that, my uncle believed that Judge Helfant gave testimony to the SCI—the same commission my uncle, Angelo Bruno, Jerry Catena, Bobby Manna, and those guys refused to testify in front of—and that he had talked about my uncle and Ange to the SCI. My unclealso believed that Judge Helfant was talking to the FBI. He would say, “This guy is a double agent. He’s no fuckin good.”
    Scarfo shared the same sentiment about his partner, Alvin Feldman.
                  This Alvin Feldman was no fuckin’ good. He called himself the King of the Jews. He had a couple of dirty book stores with my uncle, and the word going around Atlantic City was that Alvin Feldman was going to kill my uncle by putting a bomb in his car. In addition, my uncle knew that he was