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Merlino each time Judge Sullivan had asked them to continue deliberating. After deliberations had begun several days before, the jury had told the judge four times that they were impossibly deadlocked and unable to reach a verdict on any of four counts against Mr.
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20, 2018, Judge Richard Sullivan (whom President Trump has since promoted to the federal circuit) declared a mistrial in Mr.
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Merlino’s trial on racketeering and gambling charges. That was almost two years ago, when I spent a week researching and writing a story on Mr. I didn’t see the Thin One again until two decades later, when we shared an elevator at the courthouse for the Southern District of New York in 2018.Īs a character in “The Sopranos” says, “At this point in our cultural history, mob movies are classic American cinema, like Westerns.” And so it was sort of fun to rub shoulders with guys who fulfilled all the stereotypes. There was drama (Skinny Joey wasn’t pleased), and we fled. In 1998, at a tiny bar on “Two Street” (as we all called it), my roommate collided with Skinny Joey in its narrow confines, and Skinny Joey spilled his drink. Stanfa having been sent to prison for life), but he was also fairly young and quite the partier. He was the purported head of the Philadelphia mafia already (Mr. I met Skinny Joey back then, by accident. A group of alleged mobsters in South Philadelphia actually played in a local softball league-the reporters, of course, dubbed them “The Hit Men.” (One opening line in the Philadelphia Daily News? “They murdered ’em, 17-5.”) It could be easy to forget that people were being extorted, cheated, shot and more. The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News both had reporters dedicated almost exclusively to the “mob beat” in those days. (As a character in “ The Sopranos” says, “At this point in our cultural history, mob movies are classic American cinema, like Westerns.”) And so it was sort of fun to rub shoulders with guys who fulfilled all the stereotypes: the “wet look” hair, the distinctive South Philly accent (which not a single character in "The Irishman" even attempted to imitate the only one who sounded slightly like he was from Philly was America's own James Martin, S.J., who played a parish priest and actually grew up in the area), the three-quarter-length car coats, the braggadocio, the whiff of violence. Like most Americans, I love mobster movies. A friend’s girlfriend invited a group of us out for drinks one night at a South Philly fixture called Bomb Bomb ( you don’t want to know why), and when one of her friends stood up too suddenly, a pistol fell out of his waistband onto the floor. My office was just a couple of blocks from the Italian Market I ate at Dante and Luigi’s and loved Villa di Roma (which also is the locale of several scenes in "The Irishman"). Swing dance had made a comeback in the late 1990s, and the hottest place for it in Philly had previously been the reputed lair of two different Philadelphia mob bosses. There were plenty of young men posturing as wiseguys, and more than a few gangsters posing as legitimate businessmen, so often on the street and in the restaurants it was hard to tell the civilians from the connected guys. Swing dance had made a comeback, and the hottest place for it in Philly, The Five Spot, had previously been Virgilio’s, the somewhat-distant lair of two different Philadelphia mob bosses. It was the late 1990s, and Downtown, with Passyunk Avenue as the aortic valve that fed the whole area its vitality, had gone through a brutal mob war between a young born-and-bred wiseguy, Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino, and the local mob boss, the Sicilian John Stanfa. I was just a kid, fresh out of grad school, and the neighborhood was.well, it was something.
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The movie has drawn some new attention to “Downtown” (what South Philadelphia was and still often is called by anyone who lives there), and to some of Philadelphia's most famous (or infamous) organized crime figures of the past, including Felix "Skinny Razor" DiTullio (played by Bobby Cannavale), Angelo "The Gentle Don" Bruno (played by Harvey Keitel) and Phillip "Chicken Man" Testa (played by Larry Romano). “This Thing of Ours.” It is a phrase I am convinced is only used by mobsters and Jesuits.Ī fair amount of the action of “The Irishman” centers on and around Philadelphia, where the hit-man lead character Frank Sheeran (played by Robert DeNiro) purportedly did most of his work. The recent release of Martin Scorsese’s movie “ The Irishman” has brought new attention to the cabal that has been organized crime’s most famous manifestation in the United States: The Italian-American mafia, La Cosa Nostra, a.k.a.