Dom Grande with Steve Mazzone

Steve Martorano with Johnny Chang

Michael Ciancaglini with Joey Merlino

steve, to your knowledge does Dominic have any relation with his father? And what is the status of Wayne these days?. Doe he live in the open in Philly?

To my knowledge the whole family disowns Doms father. But who knows these days. Doubt hes in Philly but you never know.

Thanks Steve. Great pictures. Thanks for sharing!

Paperwork all over the place about the whip

Dom seems to be living it up, if these are recent, while the murder stufff still out there

Great Photos HS.
Always appreciated.

Q: Is Steve Martorano made?

I am from South Philly and know most of the guys you are talking about personally. On occasions I am actually in their company. When I read some of the things that people write it can not be further from the truth. I'm talking about the chart for instance. First of all people are mentioned that have passed away many years ago. Antonio (Nino) Scigliatano is deceased and he is on the chart. Not to mention others. The Narducci name seems to be mentioned a lot lately and they are completely out of this life. There was mention that Nicky (Whip) Milano is with the Narducci faction. The Narducci's totally despise this little rat piece of shit. His testimony is all over the streets of south Philly. He made statements linking both the Narducci's and Joseph Ligambi in a murder many years ago. This is common knowledge downtown. Seems like some of the guys in Philly have no problems hanging around with rats. But the Narducci's are definitely not any of them. I hear on the street that they don't even speak to some of their own family members because they got them locked up?

hey philly guy, are you related to the Narduccis? because ervy post you write says something about the narducci's not being involved in the life anymore. like your pressed on it. is phil there with you telling you what to write? lol

Anybody ever read this article about the trial when Tommy horsehead scafidi testified??

For those who follow in my part of townOctober 29 2003 at 11:40 AM Rebecca (Login VelvetMeow)
Every morning at the mob trial, about an hour before the judge takes the bench, "Fat Angelo" Lutz lumbers down the hall, lugging three coffeepots and a bottle of dishwashing soap. "Gotta make the coffee," he says.

The 400-pound defendant cruises past a long line of mob-watchers. "All us girls love Joey," says Susan Schary, the courtroom artist, who's first in line. Jean DiCiacco, retiree, is another fan: "Can you turn on TV and get a better soap opera?" she asks.

The mob lawyers file in. The cops at the federal courthouse at 6th and Market say they've never seen a more confident crew. The big guy in the overcoat and wide-brimmed hat is Bruce Cutler, the New York lawyer who gave John Gotti his Teflon coating. This is Cutler's first time in Philly. "Hey, Bruce," a defense lawyer yells as Cutler strolls into the men's room. "We saved you a seat."

Out in the hall, Eddie Jacobs, the lawyer for reputed mob boss Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino, has his arm around fellow defense lawyer Jack McMahon. "Maybe we can grab five minutes together," Jacobs says. McMahon can't believe all the spectators: "You here to see the Beatles or something?"

The elevator doors open on the ninth floor, and here come the defendants' friends, family and associates. Men with slicked-back black hair, black leather jackets and gold earrings. Stylish mob wives with gold crosses around their necks and highlights in their hair. There's Joey's wife, who looks like a model, and Joey's two sisters. That's Joey's mom, passing out pretzels.

Even the new boss of the Philly mob is here, the guy the feds say took over for Skinny Joey. "Uncle Joe" Ligambi moves behind some large associates like a halfback trailing blockers. All the ladies (and many of the men) have a kiss for the alleged new godfather. The mob crowd is shamelessly bucking the line, but nobody objects; this is what they came to see. The electronic gate outside the courtroom is blinking and buzzing: "Please empty your pockets." Marshals comb wiseguys with metal detectors, tug belt buckles and lift pant legs.

Inside, the courtroom is packed. And here come the fellas. "Handsome" Stevie Mazzone, alleged mob underboss, enters blowing kisses, followed by Skinny Joey, who waves, smiles, and pumps a fist in the air. It's casual day. Joey and Stevie wear sweaters, as does alleged mob soldier Marty "Noodles" Angelina. Georgie "Freckles" Borgesi, alleged mob consigliere, and John "Johnny Chang" Ciancaglini, alleged soldier, dress like bankers, in pin-striped suits and glasses. Johnny Chang beams across the courtroom at his wife, Kathy, who's blowing kisses. "I love you, Johnny," she calls out. Georgie waves to his mom and younger brother Anthony, who are here every day. Anthony and Georgie Borgesi are Joe Ligambi's nephews.

The last defendant, Frank Gambino, 69, looks out of place among the so-called "yuppie mobsters," like somebody's uncle who got caught in a parade. The fellas take their places around the crowded defense table. After a year in jail, they look pale. Skinny Joey is sallow, and Handsome Stevie has red-rimmed eyes. But everybody's upbeat; they can beat this thing.



"All rise for the court and jury." U.S. District Judge Herbert J. Hutton takes the bench. The jury is a real balancing act: six men, six women. Half the jurors are black. Six are from the city, six from the suburbs. Ten saw The Godfather.

Fat Angelo is spilling out of his chair as he types his "mob newsletter" on a portable computer. The newsletter is faxed or e-mailed daily to wives and family members who can't make it to court. But the newsletter is just part of Fat Angelo's duties. As the only one of seven defendants who's free on bail, Angelo functions as Mafia press secretary. He does TV interviews on Market Street, calls in updates to Angelo Cataldi on the wip morning show, and distributes printouts of the latest Inquirer and Daily News mob stories to other defendants. The fellas like to keep up with their press, and they're not shy about sharing their opinions.

"Finally got a good ****ing story out of you," Skinny Joey tells fox TV's Dave Schratwieser several weeks into the trial. The reporter laughs. "What amazes me," he says, "is these guys watch ****ing TV."

La Cosa Nostra exists to "instill fear, exert power and make money," says Assistant U.S. Attorney Zane Memeger on Day One. It's a mantra he chants 20 times in an hour-long opening statement. The prosecutor compares the local branch of La Cosa Nostra to a corporation, saying that the defendants share the guilt for three murders and two attempted murders, plus gambling, extortion, drug trafficking and receiving stolen property.

The government has a lot riding on this case, which started in March and is expected to run into this month. The feds have spent a decade spying on the Merlino gang — tapping phones, staking out hangouts, even shooting surveillance photos of all the heavy hitters on Skinny Joey's softball team. They've amassed some 5,000 tapes; they also have a team of prosecutors prepping an all-star lineup of mob canaries. It's a massive effort that will probably cost taxpayers millions of dollars, although exactly how many millions the feds refuse to say. The government's goal: to turn Skinny Joey into another trophy head on the wall, next to former godfathers Nicky Scarfo and John Stanfa, bagged in two previous racketeering cases.

Edwin J. Jacobs Jr., the lead defense lawyer, takes a swipe at the sleazy witnesses the government has gotten in bed with in its lust to nail Skinny Joey, the flashy gangster who thumbed his nose at cops for years. "The people who will testify against us are violent career criminals, unbridled liars who acted without a conscience and broke all of society's rules," Jacobs says. The mob lawyers admit some of their clients have gambling problems and may have been involved in some hustles, but the lawyers draw the line at murder. "I want you to look at my client," attorney Stephen Patrizzio says of Handsome Stevie Mazzone, "to see if he has the eyes of a killer."

The boys at the table say they've been looking forward to this day. They're sick of living under a cloud, tired of being tailed all over town. It's time for the government to put up or shut up. Bruce Cutler, representing Georgie Borgesi, repeats the prosecutor's mantra: "Instill fear, exert power, make money." He pauses for effect: "Sounds like the government to me."

"Call your first witness," the judge says.



You might wonder what it means when a career criminal like Ralph Natale "goes bad." In the upside-down world of the mob, it means Ralph has become a government witness. Actually, the government's star witness — the first sitting mob boss, the feds say, to testify against his former associates. It's a great story line — one mob boss (Natale) vs. another (Skinny Joey). The government would like the jury to forget that Ralph was facing a parole violation and a drug indictment when he flipped (he was about to become a three-time loser), and that his only other option was to die in jail. The way Ralphie explains it, he walked into a Camden courtroom and had a conversion experience.

"I looked at my wife and my three children," he says, and it hit him — all "the anxiety and the hurt." Ralph says he decided right then, "No more for La Cosa Nostra. If I have anything left in my life, I would give it to my real family."

"The Camden epiphany," the defense lawyers call it. Okay, so Ralph's got some baggage. "You don't have to like him," says one fed, testily. "You just have to believe him."

The fact is, Natale has admitted to more killings than Merlino and his boys have been accused of — including two committed with his own hands, back in the 1970s, when he was living on "the dark side." The 66-year-old turncoat is a compact guy with a shaved head, dark eyebrows and a white goatee. "I shot him twice, maybe three times in the face," Ralph says about rival gangster George Feeney. Ralph recalls how he lured another underworld competitor, Joey McGreal, out of the house on Christmas Day, supposedly for a holiday drink. McGreal was godfather to Natale's daughter. "I shot him three times in the back of the head," Ralph says casually. In his three decades as a criminal, Ralph acknowledges, he was involved in eight other gangland murders and in burning down a furniture store to collect the insurance. He did nearly 16 years in prison for arson and dealing cocaine and meth. Wanna know why he did all those things? "I didn't know the difference between right and wrong," Ralph explains.

Ralph tells the story of how he and Skinny Joey met in jail in 1990, how they hit it off in a father-and-son kind of way, and how Ralph asked for Joey to become his cellmate. "That's where we started our conspiracy to take over Philadelphia," Ralph says. They plotted to kill incumbent mob boss John Stanfa, a Sicilian native derided by Ralph as a "greaseball." The way Ralph tells it, Joey needed Ralph's connections with the New York mob to get underworld approval to rub out Stanfa. Ralph and Joey got out of jail, and their young guns went to work. "At that time, Joey and I had a bond," Ralph says.

When they weren't out stalking members of the Stanfa gang, they were extorting local bookmakers and poker-machine vendors, guys with nicknames like "Peg-Leg" and "Pipes and Slippers." Things got really busy around the holidays, Ralph explains, when the boys would do "the Christmas shakes."

"The mob operates on one thing and one thing only — sheer terrorism," Professor Ralph lectures. It's like the irs gone wrong: "We extort anyone who's doing anything illegal."

Ralph is positively cocky as he swivels his chair and talks right to the jury. When the prosecutor asks him to count something, he uses it as an opportunity to give the defendants' table the finger. Then Ralph gets into a stare-down with Joey.

Back to his story. The extortion money was rolling in, Ralph says. All the "fine young men" got new cars. They moved out of their mothers' houses and got their own places. Everything was beautiful. Then, in 1998, Ralph got busted for a parole violation.

Joey and the fellas promised to send $3,500 a month to Ralph's wife and $1,000 a month to his 30-year-old girlfriend while he was away. But after a couple of payments, the cash stopped. "Naturally, I was disappointed and hurt," Ralph says. Any idea what motivated his friends to be so disloyal? Ralph looks pissed:

"I imagine it must be their greed."



It's lunchtime, and everybody at the mob trial walks a block east to Pagano's Market, in the basement of the Mellon Independence Center. Prosecutors gather at one table, defense lawyers at another. Mob wives dine on pasta salads; associates wolf down chicken cutlets and hoagies. And over at the reporters' table, Fat Angelo holds court.

"He's a legend in his own mind," Fat Angelo says of Ralph. You have to stop by Toys 'R' Us and pick up a Mafia decoder ring so you can understand his testimony, he cracks. Fat Angelo's lawyer, Christopher Warren, doesn't seem too worried about Ralph: "The biggest problem these guys have is trying to explain — why are you hanging around with a numbnuts like him?"

U.S. Attorney Barry Gross stands in the sandwich line, looking uptight. Is he worried about how his boy Ralph is going over with the jury, or the way the judge is handling the case? Barry says he can't comment. Bruce Cutler, however, looks much more relaxed. "I'll have my usual, Matt," Cutler says to mob trial caterer Matt Pagano. That's white albacore tuna on rye, with Swiss and romaine. The mob trial has been a real boost for Matt's business. "Why watch The Sopranos on TV," he asks, "when you can see it live at Pagano's?"

Back at the courthouse, Uncle Joe Ligambi isn't too impressed with Ralph's performance. "I knew this jerkoff from years ago," he tells defense lawyer Jack McMahon. "It's all bull****. He's nothing."

Ligambi's nephew, Georgie Borgesi, is angry about Ralph passing himself off as a macho guy with big coglioni. Georgie hints he knows otherwise, broadcasting some loud and profane comments from the defendant's table: "He was a man's man when he was shaving his body and sticking a dildo up his ass," Georgie rants. Pipe down, the marshal says.



Defense lawyer Eddie Jacobs stares at Ralph "Gandhi" Natale: "Is there anybody you hang around with who doesn't have a nickname?"

"I'll have to think about that," Ralph says.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Gross tries to limit Jacobs with frequent objections, but Judge Hutton hammers him. "Mr. Gross, please do not continue to interrupt in this fashion," the judge says. "Overruled, overruled, overruled." Gross sits down, discouraged. So Ralph takes matters into his own hands. "Look, counselor, I've had killers look at me and try to intimidate me," he snaps at Jacobs. "You can't."

Jacobs plays some government tapes the prosecutors don't want the jury to hear. On the tapes, Ralph refers to Skinny Joey as "that little punk" and "that little mother-****er." He calls Georgie Borgesi "a girl" and "a homosexual," and his Uncle Joe "a freak." Stevie Mazzone is "on something;" Marty Angelina is "the penguin, the idiot." Uh-oh. Ralph sounds vindictive, like he's using the prosecutors as hit men. "I was venting," he explains. "They don't care if my wife slept in a car. They showed their true colors as men." Over at the defense table, Skinny Joey glares; Handsome Stevie smiles; Georgie Borgesi smirks.

Ralph admits to having had a mistress. "We all had girlfriends and wives," he says. What's the big deal? "Except Johnny Chang," Ralph offers, magnanimously. "He was loyal to his wife."

Ralph is looking for sympathy from the jury. He says his own wife and children have gone into hiding because of death threats. "They're afraid to go outside," he says. "They're afraid to do anything."

It's too much for Joey's mom. Rita Merlino taps a reporter on the shoulder and says she's got "a little tip" about Ralph's wife, Lucy: "She's at the racetrack every day."



"Objection, your honor," the prosecutor shouts. "Overruled," Judge Hutton says, and he tells Barry Gross to stop rolling his eyes and sighing when the judge rules against him. The prosecutor sits down and takes to gnawing on pencils. Meanwhile Jack McMahon, the defense lawyer for Marty Angelina, moves in, looking for a score. He's just asked Ralph about three guys he fingered in gangland murders. And surprise, surprise, two of the alleged hit men are sitting in the back row of the courtroom, in the section the press dubs "Murderer's Row."


The judge allows the two alleged killers (who say it ain't so) to stand up in front of the jury. First, Michael "Mikey Lance" Lancelotti takes a bow. Then it's Michael "Mikey Penknife" Virgilio's turn — only Penknife is coughing and twitching uncontrollably. He has Tourette's syndrome; the judge has to ask him to sit down. It's a great moment. The jury has to wonder why these guys aren't in jail and whether a mobster with that kind of a disability could kill anybody. Ralph tries to patch up the wound. He tells the jury that when he knew Mikey Penknife, "he was taking his medication." Backstage, Jacobs congratulates Penknife, who's been coming to the trial for days: "You finally got your walk-on."

Defense lawyer Steve Patrizzio asks Ralph why he often took his wife out with the other mob wives on Friday night, then went out with the same wives on Saturday with his girlfriend. Ralph looks angry: "Sir, everything you are saying is untrue."

"Liar," the wives say, loud enough for the reporters in front to hear.

Christopher Warren is ready for a fight when he stands up to cross-examine Ralph. But like he did with Johnny Chang, Ralph throws a bouquet, this time for Warren's client, Fat Angelo. He was just a caterer, Ralph says: "He would bring the food in and leave. He was not privy to any of the conversation." Was Fat Angelo an associate, as the government has charged? "I didn't consider him one," Ralph says. "I didn't consider him a criminal."

Fat Angelo is beaming, but is wily Ralph up to something? Is he trying to stir dissension among the ranks by nailing some defendants and giving others a pass? Warren looks dazed when he returns to the defense table. "You could have knocked me over with a feather," he tells his client.

Bruce Cutler rises to confront Ralph. It's a battle of the bald guys, featuring the heavyweight lawyer and the lightweight mobster, or, as Eddie Jacobs describes them, Dr. Evil and Mini-Me. Cutler asks Ralph about other mobsters who keep their vow of silence. "They'll die in jail," Cutler says in a booming voice. "They're men, they're men, they're men."

Cutler's style is plenty of speeches and dramatic poses. When somebody interrupts, he holds out a hand: "Barry, Barry, I've got to get through this," Cutler tells prosecutor Gross. "Oh, Mr. Natale, you're making this so difficult."

"Carry on, Mr. Cutler," Ralph says. "What a show. Oh, what a show you're putting on." He leans forward, takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. When Cutler runs out of questions, Natale steps down, unruffled after 14 days on the stand. He looks as cocky as ever. Eddie Jacobs tells reporters he knows where the federal marshals are taking Ralph:

"Back to the dark side."



Over at Pagano's, the mob wives talk about kids, eyeliner, and turncoat mobsters with potty mouths. Some of the women don't want their names mentioned. It's not exactly good press, getting branded a mob wife. Employers get nervous about that sort of thing. But Kathy Ciancaglini wants people to know her husband Johnny Chang is no criminal.

"It just hurts," she says of the accusations the feds have directed at her spouse. Extortion? "It's not in his nature," she says. "He would give you money first." She tells a story about how her mom hit a number and won $1,000, then lost the money after she hid it in a trash can. Johnny opened his wallet the next day and gave Kathy's mom the $1,000. "He's a giver, not a taker," Kathy says.

Murder? "He's not capable of murder," she says flatly. "It's not in his character." She talks about the husband who cried when he saw Saving Private Ryan, the guy who spends more time with her mom than she does. "He's so adorable," she says.



Nobody at the defense table seems concerned about the next witness, Gaetano "Tommy Horsehead" Scafidi. As one wiseguy in the family row puts it, "I remember this guy growing up. He was the village idiot."

"Well, the village idiot is trying to bury you," another wiseguy cracks.

Horsehead went to Catholic grade school and high school with some of the defendants. He got his nickname in third grade because of his big head and long face. The mob guys say that Horsehead was last in his class at St. John Neumann, out of more than 350 graduates.

But to the prosecutors, having Horsehead in their stable of turncoats is a smart move. The feds used Natale to give the jury a ceo's view of the mob, from the top down. Now they're counting on Horsehead for the view from the trenches.

Horsehead says he started his mob career at 14, running errands for wiseguys, washing cars, picking up dry cleaning. He graduated to numbers-runner, carrying paper bags stuffed with $100,000 to former mob boss Nicky Scarfo. "I was a wannabe gangster," he says — like his older brother, who's doing 40 years; like his uncles, his grandfather and his great-grandfather. Horsehead rose to shakedown artist. His specialty: beating guys with aluminum baseball bats. Why aluminum bats? Because they don't break, Horsehead says.

They can't clean this guy up. "I said to Joey, why the **** didn't you tell me what was going on?" Horsehead yells from the witness stand. He curses some more, then apologizes to the jury: "I'm sorry. That's just the way we talk."

He tells how he was forced in 1993 to put on a ski mask and a black sweatsuit and join a hit squad that shot Joey Chang, Johnny's younger brother. Johnny Chang looks down as the feds play a blurry black-and-white surveillance video. On several court TVs, a car pulls up in front of a diner shortly before 6 a.m. There's a burst of light in the doorway, gunshots, and the sound of a woman screaming.

It was Mikey Chang, Johnny's other younger brother, Horsehead testifies, who threatened to kill him if he didn't join the hit squad. Joey and Mikey Chang ended up on opposite sides in the mob wars of the '90s. Joey Chang is deaf and blind in one eye after he was shot in the face several times. Mikey Chang, Skinny Joey's closest pal, was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting. Horsehead fingers Skinny Joey and Georgie Borgesi as accomplices in the Joey Chang hit. He says Stevie Mazzone was one of the shooters, and that Marty Angelina drove the getaway car.

Over at the defense table, Joey has a hard candy rolling around in his mouth; he almost looks worried. During a break, he tells friends in the back of the courtroom that Horsehead is making history: "He's the first person to testify with Down's syndrome."

Skinny Joey may not be impressed, but Horsehead is definitely hurting his boyhood pals. He is also succeeding in de-glamorizing the mob. It's pretty sad, really, when you consider what has happened to the organization once headed by Angelo Bruno. The local branch of La Cosa Nostra has been decimated by decades of electronic surveillance, treacherous mob bosses, flap-jawed rats and successful rico prosecutions. If you believe the testimony in this case, the mob has been whittled down to a neighborhood gang of 10 or 11 guys who use baseball bats to shake down local bookies, loan sharks and poker-machine vendors.

Maybe Bruce Cutler is right: The government is obsessed with the mob, or what's left of it, and the gullible press and public play along. The prosecutors put Ralph Natale on the witness stand, and they want you to believe he's Don Corleone instead of Fredo. Did the fbi and the cops really need to tail Skinny Joey and his pals up to 15 hours a day, five days a week, plus occasional weekends, for the past 10 years? Why not legalize gambling and let the irs extort the bookies?

Horsehead tells the jury that Joey was chiseling him out of his share of shakedown money. "Joey screwed everybody," Horsehead says. "Joey was for Joey." Horsehead says he went into hiding when he got the word that Joey was plotting to kill him, joining forces with Joey's rival, John Stanfa. It was Stanfa, Horsehead says, who "straightened me out" — mob slang for becoming a made man.

Horsehead recalls his oath of omerta: "I should burn like this part of my hand," he says, and tells how he held his hand over an open flame. "Everything I believed in, I threw out the window sitting here talking to you," Horsehead says. "The oath that I took, that's what I violated." He looks stricken; the back of his neck is red, and so are his cheeks. "He's gonna cry," a wiseguy in the family row says with mock empathy. "Awww."

Horsehead can't control himself. He sobs, wipes his eyes, sips some water. It's the trial's most dramatic moment yet. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Fritchey asks Horsehead if he needs some time to compose himself. Over at the defense table, the fellas snicker and laugh — as if the class dummy just peed in his pants.

He faked it, the wiseguys say later. But other courtroom observers say it was no act; even his nose was running. "How can you tell someone's really crying?" asks courtroom artist Susan Schary. "You feel like crying yourself."

Horsehead talks about another mobster named Shotsie. How do you spell that, the prosecutor wants to know. "I don't know," Horsehead says. "I'm not a good speller." The prosecutor asks Horsehead to read his cooperating agreement with the government, and Horsehead stumbles over the word "recognition." More snickers.

Horsehead says the fbi came to him years ago and tried to talk him into being a government witness, but "I wouldn't rat on anybody. ... I was trying to protect the organization. People that I knew and loved all my life." He glares at the defense table. "Their boss went bad, and they wanted to kill me," he says. He claims that Georgie Borgesi tried to lure him into a trap by saying that Joey wasn't really mad at him. Horsehead says he was lucky to survive two assassination attempts: "I kept my mouth shut all those years, and it didn't mean nothing." He reads a sympathetic letter Georgie sent him in prison. Jurors glare at Georgie, wondering if he was trying to set up the class dummy. In the letter, George expresses sympathy for Horsehead, and rips that "lying bald-headed rat drug-dealing fa***t" Ralph Natale.

"Let's hope all the members of the jury are practicing heterosexuals," sighs Eddie Jacobs.

So Horsehead became a government witness, but it's not easy. "Believe me when I tell you ladies and gentlemen, I cried like a baby," he says. "I know they got families and all," he says of his boyhood pals. But, "They were gonna kill me for no good reason. They didn't give a **** about me."

David Fritchey, the prosecutor who prepped Horsehead for trial, is beaming during a courtroom break. "He is what he is," Fritchey says. "The genuine article."

"He's killing us," one defense lawyer concedes. "We're on the way to Auschwitz, and he's driving the train."



Still, Eddie Jacobs is confident about his upcoming cross-examination. "How would you like to match wits with Horsehead?" he asks a reporter. Jacobs's client, Skinny Joey, looks tired. His cellmate, Johnny Chang, has been keeping him up all night with his snoring. "How do you sleep with him?" Skinny Joey yells across the courtroom to Kathy Ciancaglini.

"I haven't in a year," she says.

Horsehead takes the stand, and Jacobs goes after him, but the turncoat plays rope-a-dope. "I'm not as intelligent as you, Mr. Jacobs," Horsehead says. "Don't sell yourself short," Jacobs replies.

Jacobs gets Horsehead to admit that almost 20 years ago, he watched another turncoat mobster, Nicky Crow, cry crocodile tears in a South Philly restaurant after helping to murder a mobster named Pat the Cat. Jacobs suggests that's where Horsehead learned to blubber. "Tears can be part of a hoax?" Jacobs asks. Horsehead seems to be a man without guile. "Absolutely," he says.

Jacobs uses Horsehead to contradict Ralph Natale, noting that Ralph's written confession implicates Horsehead in four gangland murders. Horsehead has only copped to two. Clearly, one of the two men is lying. But which one? It'd be nice if all the government snitches were on the same page. How can the jury convict on contradictory hearsay evidence?

Bruce Cutler gets his chance to cross-examine Horsehead, but it's slow going. "I don't understand the word 'propitious,'" Horsehead tells Cutler. The lawyer gets angry because Horsehead talks straight to the jury: "Look at me, Mr. Witness!" Cutler screams, thumping his chest. "I'm asking the questions!"

"Please, Mr. Cutler, be civil," the judge says. Cutler also doesn't like the way Horsehead slouches on the witness stand. "Sit up, sir!" he screams at the witness. "Will you please sit up, sir!" The judge calls a recess. Cutler apologizes, but then bogs down with more theatrics and pregnant pauses. "A drama queen without substance," one courtroom observer says. Fat Angelo shuts down the mob newsletter for the day and plays cards on his portable computer.

During a break, Cutler expresses frustration; apparently it's not easy always being the last of seven defense lawyers to cross-examine each witness. "I never had to labor so hard," Cutler tells Jacobs and a reporter regarding his role as anchor on the dream team. If he'd known how difficult it was going to be, "I never would have come down" to Philly, Cutler says. "It's a waste."

Uh-oh — back in the courtroom, Horsehead looks confused again. "I don't understand the word 'averment,'" he tells Cutler. Horsehead explains he's a little slow. Cutler seems exasperated. "No, you're not slow, Mr. Scafidi," Cutler says. He's thinking about Horsehead's boyhood pals. "We're facing life, and you're gonna be out on a beach somewhere." b



Ralph Cipriano is a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. E-mail: mail@phillymag.com

FUNNY AS HELL

I just know fact from fiction. A lot of people on this site talk about things they don't know

is funny how weird merlino and the baby chang try to kill the middle bro and then the oldest sits at the table and shere a cell mafia 1st. anyone no the 2 murders horsehead coped to?

i find that brother thing between the changs just absolutely crazy... 2 brothers basically dead on different sides of a mob war in s philly is nuts

Did Mikey Chang participate in the shooting of his brother Joey Chang at the Diner?

Bobby Riccobene should be on the flipped list

He is believed to be

Mike lancelotti was supposed to have been one of the shooters

Supposetley they all met over Mikey Chang's house early in the morning.horse Scafidi thought they were going to go visit Joey's father in prison.When told of the hit,Horsehead was skeptical but Mikey Chang gave him a gun and said you either go along or I will kill you right here.I don't think Mikey Chang went with them.

That's cold!

Does anyone have a better idea of what the current hierarchy is ?

why did they want to kill horsehead to begin with?