I’ve been watching the very interesting Mob Scene videos on Philly.com that feature George Anastasia, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s ace organized crime reporter. 

Anastasia has been covering organized crime in Philadelphia and South Jersey for more than 25 years. He has also written several books on organized crime, such as Blood and Honor , The Last Gangster and his latest, Mobfiles: Mobsters, Molls and Murder.

I recall venturing to Borders book store more than ten years ago to hear Anastasia talk about his book The Goodfella Tapes. 

The true crime book is about how the FBI secretly recorded an internecine mob war and brought down a crime boss. Like his previous organized crime books, South Philadelphia is featured so prominently inThe Goodfella Tapes, it’s practically a character. Being part Italian and born, bred and still living in South Philly, I’m familiar with the territory.    

Anastasia read passages from his book and fielded questions from a crowd of about 30 people. He also talked about his distress of recently learning from a source that there had been a plot to kill him.

“The Philadelphia mob family is probably the most dysfunctional crime family in America,” I recall Anastasia telling the crowd. “It’s kind of The Simpsons of the underworld.”

How it got that way, he said, is what the book is all about. Anastasia talked about the 1993-95 mob war in and around South Philadelphia. Anastasia explained that on one side of the conflict was an old world Sicilian boss and on the other side was a group of born and bred South Philadelphians who were the off-springs of the previous leadership of the local mob. 

Anastasia spoke of when one failed hit man used the wrong size shells in a shotgun (similar to Jimmy Breslin’s great comic crime novel, The Gang  Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight), how another mob guy called off a hit because he had to report to his parole officer, and other comical, yet deadly serious acts during the mob war.     

And the Feds got it all down on tape. A minor gambling investigation led to the FBI placing listening devices in a lawyer’s office in New Jersey. The mob guys met there secretly, and they believed securely, as they were under the mistaken idea that the FBI could not plant bugs in a lawyer’s office. But the FBI convinced a federal judge that criminal activity was taking place in the office and he approved the audio surveillance. 

The mob guys met in the lawyer’s office to discuss mob gossip, tactics and philosophy. Over the course of two years, the FBI recorded 2,000 conversations. 

“Goodfellas don’t sue goodfellas… goodfellas kill goodfellas,” explained one mob guy to a mob associate and potential litigant as the FBI listened in. Anastasia, who had access to the FBI’s tapes, offers a good many other fascinating and insightful conversations in his book.

Anastasia said he became interested in covering organized crime as he was the descendant of Sicilian grandparents who settled in South Philadelphia. Anastasia said he began covering crime when he was assigned by the Inquirer to cover Atlantic City at the time of the gambling referendum in 1976. There was much talk about keeping the mob out, but Anastasia said that the mob was all ready deeply entrenched. He began to cover more and more mob stories.

“I was fascinated because it’s the dark side of the Italian-American experience,” Anastasia explained.

I asked Anastasia how he responded to criticism from Italian-Americans that his extensive coverage of “the dark side,” as he put it, offered a negative image of Italians. After all, only a very small number of Italian-Americans were involved in organized crime.

“One, these guys are taking the positive values of the Italian-American experience – honor, family and loyalty – and bastardizing them for their own end,” Anastasia replied. “I think you should shine a light on that.

“I don’t worry about people who buy into stereotypes. We could talk for hours about the contributions that Italians and Italian-Americans have made to this country and the world,” Anastasia said. “I take pride in that.”

So if you want to take a walk on the dark side and learn about organized crime in South Philly and South Jersey, pick up one or more of George Anastasia’s true crime books.

     

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