Nicky Scarfo Killed His Most Loyal Soldier — Then His Own Blood Turned on Him

Nicky Scarfo, boss of the Philadelphia Mafia, believed that fear made men loyal. In the 1980s some two dozen men were murdered under his rule, and most of them were his own people. Then he ordered the death of Salvie Testa, the most loyal soldier he had. After that, every man around him did the same arithmetic. The witnesses who put Little Nicky away for life came from his own table, and the last one to walk away was the nephew he had raised in his own house. Chapters: 00:00 The Wrong Protection 01:26 Nine Days Before Christmas 02:34 I Love This 03:30 The Exile 04:42 The Casinos Arrive 05:23 Two Men in the Way 06:11 The Throne and the Son 07:01 The Street Tax 07:41 A War Run From a Cell 08:43 He Had Eight Months 08:53 The Wedding That Did Not Happen 09:46 The Best Friend 10:18 The Candy Store 10:51 A New Piece of Arithmetic 11:34 Casablanca South 12:18 The Brothers 13:18 One Million Dollars 14:02 Nicky Crow Does the Math 14:30 Two Men in One Month 15:00 The Airport 15:27 Seventeen Defendants 16:28 The Verdict 16:56 The Last Man at His Shoulder 18:15 Halloween 18:48 The Answer 19:17 The Other Photograph If you want more of the real Mafia stories the movies left out, told straight with the court records behind them, subscribe to Crime In. ✍️ FROM THE EDITOR: The photograph this story opens with is a real FBI surveillance shot: Nicky Scarfo in a dark suit, with two younger men walking at his shoulders. The second photograph, near the end, shows him around 1980 with his nephew, the Merlino brothers and Salvie Testa. Within ten years he had killed one of them, broken two, and lost the fourth to the government. Which Philadelphia story should I dig into next: the bomb under Philip Testa's porch, or the night Angelo Bruno was shot in his car? 📚 Sources & further reading: • United States v. Pungitore, 910 F.2d 1084 (3d Cir. 1990): https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/... • United States v. Scarfo, 850 F.2d 1015 (3d Cir. 1988): https://openjurist.org/850/f2d/1015/u... • UPI (1988) — "Hitman says slain mob captain set up by best friend": https://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/10/... • Philadelphia Inquirer (2013) — "The inside story of a mob shakedown for Penn's Landing": https://www.inquirer.com/philly/enter... • Philadelphia Inquirer (2017) — "Tyrannical Mafia boss Nicodemo 'Little Nicky' Scarfo, 87, dies in prison hospital": https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/... • Big Trial (2014) — "Leonetti Rips Uncle, Says Cousin Didn't Have A Chance": https://www.bigtrial.net/2014/07/leon... • Wikipedia — Nicodemo Scarfo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicodem... • Wikipedia — Salvatore Testa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvato... • Wikipedia — Phil Leonetti: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Le... #Mafia #NickyScarfo #PhiladelphiaMob