March 29–April 5, 2001

city beat| mob trials

Mr. Bigmouth

Hey ralphy boy: Reputed mob boss Ralph Natale had a flair for the dramatic.

Ralph Natale used his many years behind bars to convince local gangsters that he was tough enough to lead the mob.

by Jim Barry and Howard Altman

When the prison gates swung open in 1994 to release Ralph Natale upon an unsuspecting world, a new generation of the Philadelphia Mafia stood ready to welcome Natale back as a "man’s man."

"He did his time like a man," said one mobster. "We all thought Ralph Natale was one stand-up motherfucker."

Seven years later, many in the mob question Natale’s gangster gravitas. The question is more than idle underworld gossip; it’s the crux of reputed mobster Joey Merlino’s defense in his federal murder and racketeering trial for which Natale is scheduled to be the government’s star witness.

Natale claims to be the Philly crime kingpin, which would make him the first mob boss ever to testify as a government witness. Merlino’s faction paint him as a pussy-whipped liar. In a trial where potential jurors are repeatedly asked by the bench if they’ve seen HBO’s The Sopranos, prosecutors and defense attorneys alike plan to show that the fictional crime family has nothing on the real deal.

Starting with the life and times of Ralph Natale.

Just as there are two versions of Natale’s life atop the Philly crime family, his friends and foes offer opposing glimpses into his surprising rise to prominence.

Ralph Natale was born and raised in an enclave of Italian immigrants and Italian Americans in South Philadelphia. His mother and two aunts still live there. One of his brothers is a music conductor for an Atlantic City casino.

Natale is married to Lucy Natale, with whom he has five adult children: three daughters and two sons. He also has a fourth daughter by an old girlfriend. She is now in her twenties and according to Natale’s associates wants nothing to do with him.

A close friend of Natale’s — who, like all of the Natale acquaintances interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity — said Ralph was "always telling stories about growing up in South Philadelphia. When we would meet someone from his old neighborhood who had been a close friend, Ralph would say, ‘We used to piss off the curb together.’"

Many of Natale’s stories centered on former mob boss Angelo Bruno, who was murdered in 1980. Natale’s associates remember him describing his close personal friendship with Bruno, who had criminal contacts and legal and illegal businesses in Philadelphia, New York, Italy, the Caribbean, even London. Bruno was a friend and occasional business partner of such legendary mobsters as Carlo Gambino and Meyer Lansky, and he knew all of the old-time bosses of crime families throughout the United States.

"Natale would talk about his good friend Angelo Bruno," said one former Natale associate. "He would say, ‘I used to sit across the table from Angelo and push my money over to him. But he wouldn’t take it. He’d say, ‘You keep it, Ralph. That’s not for me. You’re doing a fine job. I don’t want your money, just your friendship.’ Natale was trying to make us all think he was so important to Bruno. Like they were best friends or something."

An FBI surveillance film from the late 1970s, offered as evidence in previous mob trials, shows a jaunty Ralph Natale dressed in a groovy, long-sleeve print shirt and tight white bell-bottoms. Balding but with a thick black mustache, he looks like a middle-aged disco dancer as he shakes hands with Phil "Chicken Man" Testa and Frank Sindone outside a South Philadelphia restaurant. At the time, Testa was Bruno’s second-in-command, while Sindone oversaw much of Bruno’s gambling and loan-sharking rackets throughout the Delaware Valley.

"Let me tell you about Ralph," said a mob defense attorney who spoke to City Paper in a phone interview. "He was a nobody. But Angelo Bruno liked him. Ralph was just a big-mouthed bartender. In the late 1960s, one of Bruno’s friends got Ralph a job at the Rickshaw Inn in Cherry Hill. It was across the street from the Garden State Race Track, and in those days it was a hangout for low-level crooks on the fringe of the mob."

Natale got his big break a few years later when Local 170, the bartenders’ union he belonged to, was in turmoil. Three union leaders allied with Bruno were arrested and convicted of extortion. After they were imprisoned, Natale became head of the union.

State and federal lawmen said Angelo Bruno was the real boss of the union, and U.S. Senate investigators reported that Natale was diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the union’s health benefit plans to Bruno.

"Natale was like a bully who was suddenly in charge of something," said the mob attorney who knew Natale back then. "He went from behind the bar at the Rickshaw to union boss. He started throwing his weight around. He was a real jerk. Like a bully who suddenly gets some real power."

While Ralph was throwing his weight around, former Local 170 official Joey McGreal was in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas bodyguarding imprisoned Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. When McGreal was released, he headed back to Camden, NJ to pick up where he’d left off. McGreal wanted his old union back. Two months later, on Christmas Day, 1973, McGreal’s body was found in his Cadillac in a restaurant lot in New Jersey. He had been shot several times in the back of the head. Natale, now a government witness, has told the feds he participated in McGreal’s murder.

What made Natale tick?

Moola, say mobsters.

"He was always greedy for money," say several of Natale’s former associates. "Always looking to score." So when a corrupt lawyer for Mr. Living Room, a failing furniture store in Marlton, NJ, approached Ralph Natale about a little arson for profit, Natale was in. A little napalm and some explosives later, the owner was ready to cash in his million-dollar insurance policy — and Natale and the corrupt lawyer were to get 25 percent of the insurance settlement.

Unfortunately for Natale, a hitman named Charlie Allen had become a government informant and was taping Natale’s conversations, like one in which Natale told Allen they were going to have to murder a partner who owed him money. Natale was taped saying, "I’m gonna take him down by the waterfront… I’m gonna dump ’im. That guy’s stealing my fuckin’ money and when somebody gets into my money…"

Another Allen tape captured talk of an impending mob war. With the coming of casinos, some Bruno soldiers wanted a bigger piece of the pie in Atlantic City, and they thought Bruno was too old-fashioned to share it with them. But Ralph Natale was a Bruno loyalist who was taped asking Allen to help him get guns in case the shooting started.

In another conversation Natale revealed that he was a no-show employee for the largest beer distributorship in Philadelphia, and that he was one of several Bruno men on the payroll there.

But most damaging for Natale were Allen’s tapes of drug deals. In 1978 Natale was arrested for the Mr. Living Room arson and convicted a year later. While out on bail during an appeal in that case, Natale headed south to Fort Lauderdale, FL. There, he used Allen to sell 4,000 Quaaludes and arranged a meeting between Allen’s buyers — who were undercover federal agents — and Natale’s cocaine suppliers. In January 1979, Natale and 10 others were arrested, and in July 1980 Natale was convicted of smuggling cocaine into the United States. The prison door slammed shut behind Ralph Natale for the first time.

"Ralph Natale was always an incompetent criminal," said a mob defense attorney who has known him since the beginning of his criminal career. "Not only does Natale always get caught, he always gets other people caught. He got caught in the arson case. He got caught in the drug case. And years later, when he came back out, he got his own family involved in meth and got them caught. He got his old friends involved in drug-dealing and they got caught. Natale is on the devil’s speed dial. And now he’s turning in all of his old friends so he doesn’t have to go back to jail for the rest of his life."

According to a former Natale associate who spoke to City Paper recently in a South Philadelphia diner, Natale often described his experience in prison as "like being inside an x-ray machine. Prison shows you who is a real man — how they handle themselves. You see how they act at Christmas with no family or friends around, locked up like that. You see how they do their time. You see who breaks, who bends and who is a stand-up guy."

But 16 years of living in a cage was hard to forget even after Natale had exchanged a small cell for a penthouse apartment with beautiful marble floors and big, wide windows overlooking the Cooper River Park in Pennsauken, NJ. Former Natale associates remember how he would dramatically demonstrate his memories of life in prison by stepping into the walk-in closet.

"‘This is how I lived for 16 years,’" a Natale associate remembers him growling to his audience. "‘In a space no bigger than this, 16 years.’"

A friend of Natale’s claimed that he was attacked in prison. "Someone threw acid or bleach into his face. And because of that Ralph Natale is blind in the left eye." But Natale’s friend said it was rare for anyone to attack Ralph because he was usually the victor in prison fights. Ralph told him, "‘I never step down, never back down. I take care of everything myself. That’s how you get respect.’ And that meant if Ralph had to stomp somebody, he stomped them."

"He was a general in prison. People feared him," a close friend of Natale’s told City Paper in a recent interview in an Old City cafe. "One time," Natale’s friend claimed, "the Muslims shut down the whole prison during a strike. Nobody knew what to do because they were a very big and very dangerous gang inside that place. Finally, prison officials came to Ralph and asked him to help. Then the other gang leaders asked for Natale’s help. One word from Ralph to the Muslims and the strike was over. That’s why he was a general inside."

According to both Natale’s friend and his former associates, Ralph Natale’s word was considered the ultimate rule of law in prison. "He would wrap these thick magazines around his waist under his undershirt," said the friend, "in case someone tried to stab him. Then he would strut out into the yard where these rival gang leaders would surround him, waiting on his judgment about some dispute. Whatever he decided, like the Supreme Court, everybody had to follow it. And they did."

Another story, told by Ralph’s friend, concerns Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, one of several prisons where Natale served his time. Leavenworth was considered at one time the most dangerous prison in the country. Says the friend, "Seven stabbings a day and one killing a day, behind the wall. Every kind of violence and every kind of prison gang — black, Aryan brotherhood, Latino gangs. Battling over drugs, illegal gambling or just their turf. The Mafia families were in there, too, and in the prison cafeteria each city had their own table. New York had a table. The Chicago wise guys had a table. But there was no table for Philly. So one day, Ralph goes into the cafeteria, right in front of all of the gangs and his own Mafia pals and wham, he turns over one of the tables. It hit the floor, the food goes flying and the cons jump up and it’s dead quiet. Ralph says, ‘From now on, this is the Philly table.’ Nobody even challenged him, that’s how tough they thought he was, so from then on the Philly mob had their own table."

Even Merlino’s crew bought into Natale’s tough-guy persona.

"Yeah, sure, people thought Ralph was tough in prison," says a man who is friends with both Natale and Joey Merlino. "But the only thing tough about him is his mouth. Trouble is, he’s a great liar. Everybody believed Natale. In prison he had the look and the stories, so of course people feared him. He is a legend in his own mind. He was in prison with Joey Merlino and a lot of the young guys, and they heard his bullshit stories and saw how people feared Ralph in prison, so they bought the whole thing. Ralph talked his way into becoming the mob boss. And that’s all it was, too, just talk."