Philip Leonetti was born in Philadelphia on March 27, 1953, and grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He joined the Philadelphia crime family as a young man, was formally inducted in June 1980, and became its underboss in early 1986, second in rank to the boss, Nicodemo Scarfo. Within two years he was in court. A federal jury in Philadelphia convicted him of racketeering in November 1988, one of seventeen defendants found guilty at the end of a ten-week trial, and in May 1989 he was sentenced to 45 years.
What followed is the larger part of his record. In June 1989 Leonetti began cooperating with federal authorities, and over the following years he testified at more than a dozen trials. At a resentencing in May 1992 the court reduced his sentence to six and one-half years and called his cooperation extraordinary. He has said publicly that he took part in ten murders, the first when he was 23. No court convicted him of any of them. He was tried for one and acquitted, a second charge was dismissed, and others he was never charged with until he admitted them as a cooperating witness.
Leonetti grew up in Atlantic City and played point guard for the Holy Spirit High School team. By his own account he understood by the age of ten or eleven what the organization around him was. The leadership of the Philadelphia family changed sharply in his early adulthood. Angelo Bruno had led it from about 1960 until he was killed in 1980. His successor, Phillip Testa, was killed in early 1981, and Scarfo, who had served as consigliere, took over as boss.
Leonetti was made a member on June 8, 1980, became a captain in May or June 1981, and supervised a crew that collected extortion payments. In early 1986 Scarfo moved the existing underboss, Salvatore Merlino, down to captain and named Leonetti in his place. With the post came Merlino's share in a sports betting business. When Leonetti was charged in New Jersey in April 1987, federal officials regarded him as a likely future leader of the family.
By Leonetti's own account his first killing came in 1976, when he was 23. The victim was Louis DeMarco, who died in Atlantic City that year. By Leonetti's account, he and Vincent Falcone killed him. No charge was brought over his death in the years before Leonetti began cooperating.
Edwin Helfant died on February 15, 1978. The Third Circuit later described the killing as following a dispute over a fixed case, and it was charged against the boss as the first racketeering act in the 1988 indictment. By Leonetti's account, he took part in it with Scarfo and another member of the family. Leonetti was not charged at the time because the government lacked enough evidence. He admitted his involvement when he began cooperating in 1989.
On December 16, 1979, Vincent Falcone was killed in Margate, New Jersey. By Leonetti's later account, he killed Falcone on Scarfo's order, without the approval of Angelo Bruno, then the leader of the family. The Third Circuit, reviewing the 1988 convictions, described the act as following remarks Falcone had made about Scarfo and Leonetti.
Leonetti, Scarfo and a third man were arrested about a week after the killing and indicted in January 1980. They were released on bail and went to trial in Atlantic County in the early autumn of that year. The jury acquitted all three. In his memoir, published more than thirty years later, Leonetti names Falcone among the ten people he killed.
Two further cases ended without a conviction. Giuseppe Leva died in the summer of 1977, and Leonetti was indicted over his death; the charges were later dismissed. Salvatore Testa died on September 14, 1984. His death was charged as a racketeering act in the federal indictment, and Leonetti was arrested over it in April 1987 and held for trial with other members of the family. At a trial in Philadelphia that ended in May 1988, Scarfo, Leonetti and other defendants were found not guilty of the murder.
In April 1987 Leonetti was among those charged in New Jersey with racketeering and extortion. State and federal authorities held him from that month, first in the Philadelphia city system and, after the 1988 verdict, in federal custody in New York until May 1989.
In January 1988 a federal grand jury in Philadelphia returned an indictment naming 19 people. It contained 11 counts of racketeering and racketeering conspiracy covering the period from April 1976 to October 1987. The racketeering counts included 14 acts of murder or attempted murder, along with extortion, illegal gambling and a drug conspiracy. Sixteen of the 19 were already in jail or awaiting trial when the charges were announced at a joint news conference of federal, state and local officials. Leonetti, then 34 and living in Atlantic City, was described as a reputed underboss.
The trial before U.S. District Judge Franklin Van Antwerpen in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ran for ten weeks. It ended on November 19, 1988, when the jury found all 17 defendants guilty on the two main racketeering counts. Scarfo, then 59, was among them, as were Leonetti, Nicholas Virgilio and the rest of the senior and middle ranks of the family. Some defendants were also convicted on drug, gambling and extortion counts. The assistant U.S. attorney who tried the case, Louis Pichini, said afterward that the verdict "broke the myth of the Mafia's invincibility." The jury found that Scarfo personally took part in eight of thirteen killings charged against the family, and found him guilty of loansharking, bookmaking, drug dealing and extortion.
At the sentencing in May 1989, Leonetti received 45 years. The defendants had faced a possible 40 to 55 years each, and Scarfo was sentenced to 55 years on the racketeering and murder charges that month. Fourteen defendants appealed. In 1990 the Third Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Greenberg, affirmed their convictions and sentences. The court noted that Leonetti "was a defendant in this case and was convicted but has withdrawn his appeal." By then he had been cooperating for some months.
Leonetti began cooperating with federal authorities in June 1989, about a month after sentencing. Facing a 45-year term, he said in 2013, "Once you are in this life, there's only two ways out: jail or death." The court that resentenced him called him "the most significant crime figure who chose to cooperate" at that time.
He testified at length. By the mid-1990s he had given evidence at eight federal trials, three federal retrials and three state trials, and his testimony had contributed to the convictions of more than 15 made members and 23 associates of organized crime families. He was a witness against the New York leader Vincent Gigante, and his decision to cooperate has been described as a factor in the decision of Salvatore Gravano to do the same.
In May 1992 the court resentenced Leonetti. His term was reduced from 45 years to six and one-half years, a decision that rested on his cooperation, which the court described as "extraordinary" and "outstanding." He left federal custody in 1992.
Leonetti left the federal witness protection program and has lived under a new identity. A memoir of his years in the family was published in December 2012. In February 2013 he gave a television interview with his face hidden and his voice disguised, saying that he regretted the life he had led and that his sentence was "justice for me." In July 2014 he said that his life had been good and that he was living in another part of the country with his family under a new name.
The prosecutions of the 1980s depended on the federal racketeering statute, known as RICO (18 U.S.C. §§ 1962(c) and (d)). It allows a court to convict members of an organization on the pattern of crimes committed through it, such as murder, extortion and illegal gambling, instead of trying each act on its own. In the 1990 appeal the Third Circuit held that a conspiracy count under § 1962(d) does not require each defendant to have agreed to commit two predicate acts personally, and that the indictment could properly include conspiracies to commit murder as racketeering acts.
The Third Circuit's opinion also describes the family's structure: a boss at the top, then a consigliere and an underboss, then captains who led crews of soldiers, with associates below them, all linked to a national commission of regional bosses. As underboss, Leonetti stood second to the boss, and the 1988 verdict reached the entire upper layer of the family at once.
Leonetti's total of ten murders is his own statement. Three victims are named as admitted: Louis DeMarco, Edwin Helfant and Vincent Falcone.
A jury acquitted him of the Falcone killing in 1980, years before he admitted it. A jury acquitted him of the Testa killing in 1988. The Leva charges were dismissed, and Helfant and DeMarco were never charged. His only conviction was the federal racketeering verdict of 1988, and that verdict does not specify which killings the jury attributed to him.
March 27, 1953: Born in Philadelphia.
1976: Louis DeMarco dies in Atlantic City; Leonetti later admits his part.
Summer 1977: Giuseppe Leva dies; Leonetti is indicted and the charges are later dismissed.
February 15, 1978: Edwin Helfant dies; Leonetti later admits his part.
December 16, 1979: Vincent Falcone dies in Margate. Leonetti, Scarfo and a third man are arrested about a week later.
June 8, 1980: Leonetti is inducted into the family.
Early autumn 1980: The three are acquitted at an Atlantic County trial.
1980 to 1981: Angelo Bruno and then Phillip Testa die; Scarfo becomes boss.
May or June 1981: Leonetti becomes a captain.
September 14, 1984: Salvatore Testa dies.
Early 1986: Leonetti becomes underboss.
April 1987: Leonetti is arrested and held on state and federal charges.
January 1988: A federal grand jury in Philadelphia returns an 11-count indictment naming 19 people.
May 1988: Scarfo, Leonetti and other defendants are acquitted of the Testa murder.
November 19, 1988: The federal jury convicts 17 defendants, including Leonetti, of racketeering.
May 1989: Leonetti is sentenced to 45 years.
June 1989: He begins cooperating.
1990: The Third Circuit affirms the convictions of the appellants; Leonetti has withdrawn his appeal.
May 1992: His sentence is reduced to six and one-half years.
1992: He leaves federal custody.
December 2012 to February 2013: His memoir is published and he gives interviews.
July 2014: He is living outside the region under a new identity.