Philly's Younger Mobsters Lack `Standards,' Say Police -- Latest War Moves Killings From Back Alleys To Public Byways

PHILADELPHIA - The young mob wiseguys congregate at a clubhouse with a Greenpeace sign out front.

The Sicilian-born man reputed to be the leader of the old guard works out of a warehouse patrolled by a black-and-white pit bull that plays fetch with slabs of old tires.

And the shootings and killings occur not in back alleys and dimly lighted bars, but on neighborhood streets, around the corner from a landmark diner, and on an access ramp off the city's major expressway.

Mob wars just aren't what they used to be.

Philadelphia is embroiled in its third mob skirmish in 13 years. But in this battle between a young turk, Joseph "Skinny Joe" Merlino, and a reputed crime chief, John Stanfa, the old, established rules of keeping the war off the streets - and away from innocents - has ended.

The body count thus far: two mobsters dead and four wounded.

Even the generals said to be running this war have been nicked.

Merlino took a gun blast - in the rear end. He was lucky. His friend and cohort, Michael Ciancaglini, was killed Aug. 5 just outside the young turks' clubhouse.

Later that month, Stanfa emerged unscathed after a gun battle down an exit ramp off the Schuylkill Expressway. But his son, Joseph, remains hospitalized with a gunshot wound in the jaw.

`KIDS HAVE NO STANDARDS'

"You're not talking traditional old-line Cosa Nostra people," said Capt. Mike Lorenzo of the Philadelphia police organized-crime intelligence unit.

"Those old guys had a code and standards. These kids have no standards. It's king of the hill. Whoever survives, survives."

Meanwhile, those who live in south Philadelphia, a tightly knit working-class community filled with tidy row homes, small businesses, restaurants and churches, watch in horror as their neighborhood is turned into a back lot for a mob vendetta.

Only in this movie, the bullets are real.

The latest south Philly hit took place Sept. 17 when an alleged Merlino associate, Frank Baldino Sr., 50, was murdered while sitting in his car outside the famed Melrose Diner.

Just a day earlier on another south Philadelphia street, they were reliving the details of another scene from the mob war.

On the corner of 8th and St. Albans, they talked about the shooting of Leon "Yonnie" Lanziolotti, 45, a professional gambler with ties to Stanfa. Lanziolotti survived the shooting outside a bar, but his blood poured on a lion's head statue and the pavement like wine spilling on a tablecloth.

"I thought all of this mob stuff was over and done," said Lamont Graves, owner of Bella Vista Pizzeria, which lies less than a half-block from the mob hit site. "Obviously, it still goes on.

"I'm worried. Anything can happen in front of you or inside the store. And I fear for the little children who ride up and down the street, who stay out and play football and street hockey. What if they should get hit?"

Philadelphia police have vowed to sweep the mob off the street, cracking down on numbers and gambling, even using traffic arrests to jail suspected mob members.

"The bottom line is we're not going to tolerate this kind of conflict in the city," Police Commissioner Richard Neal said Friday night after a second mob hit in three days.

Col. Justin Dinito, Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, was even more explicit.

"As long as they kill one another, that's one thing," said Dinito. "I'm concerned about innocent bystanders being hurt or killed. If it does happen, the level of our involvement will increase. We'll go from a yellow alert to a red alert."

For the police, the stakes are simple: public safety.

For the mob, the stakes are simpler still: control of organized crime in Philadelphia and southern New Jersey with its interests in gambling, prostitution, narcotics and labor racketeering.

"They are looking for money and power, which goes hand in hand with the position of boss," Dinito said.

Apparently, that's one tough position to hold onto.

The battle for mob leadership in Philadelphia is a long-running story, where the winners rule briefly and the losers are taken away in body bags or are hauled off to prison.

`LITTLE NICKY' IN PRISON

Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo was the last man to oversee the Philly mob with an iron fist, rising to power in the mid-1980s before being jailed for racketeering in 1988.

Now, others are seeking to fill the power vacuum.

The new battle pits Merlino and those law-enforcement officials call "wannabe gangsters" against Stanfa and the old guard.

Merlino, 31, the son of an imprisoned former Scarfo soldier, heads a group of dozen or so second-generation mobsters. Most are in their early 30s, nearly all related to former crime family soldiers.

To take on Stanfa is not merely brazen - it's deadly.

Stanfa, 52, gray haired and burly, should not be underestimated. Born in Sicily, living in the United States since 1964, he had a front-row seat for the first big Philadelphia mob war of the 1980s. He drove for mob boss Angelo Bruno. He also walked away from the car after Bruno's assassination.

He sat out the mob wars of the 1980s in jail, serving eight years for perjury.

But he's back, apparently at the center of another war.

And the man who hates publicity so much he once personally chased off his warehouse property Geraldo Rivera and an ambush film crew even has a nickname - courtesy of the Philadelphia Daily News "Name the Don" contest.

Call him John "Tightlips" Stanfa.

They sure don't make mob wars like they used to.