November 29–December 6, 2001

news|underworld

The Fat Lady Sings

Former mobster Yogi Merlino finally comes home. In a casket.

by M. Novak

Last Sunday Lawrence "Yogi" Merlino came home for the last time. He was in a coffin that was shipped under a name only the administrators of the federal witness protection program know.

He died of a cancer-related illness — but the details are not publicly known. He may have been living out West for the last three years — he once had an attorney in Salt Lake City.

Yogi Merlino was buried from a Catholic Church in Margate, N.J., on an unusually warm and sunny day for the seashore in November. His former wife and children attended, as did old family friends, some members of the local steel workers union and defense attorney Eddie Jacobs.

"It’s weird that Jacobs went to that funeral," one mob guy told City Paper. "I mean, Jacobs defended some of the people with ["Little Nicky"] Scarfo, and Yogi turned against Scarfo. Plus, Eddie is Joey Merlino’s attorney now."

Or not so weird. Jacobs represented Yogi Merlino in the Falcone murder trial, and Merlino was acquitted.

Yogi Merlino was Joey Merlino’s uncle. Yogi and Joey’s father, Salvatore "Chuckie" Merlino, were once high-ranking members of the mob when "Little Nicky" Scarfo ran the Philadelphia-South Jersey Mafia from the Ducktown section of Atlantic City in the 1980s.

The two Merlino brothers, Yogi and Chuckie, were friends and criminal associates of Nicky Scarfo from when they were all teenagers.

In the early ’60s, Nicky Scarfo was banished from South Philadelphia to the Little Italy neighborhood of Atlantic City for killing a man in a common brawl — the fight had nothing to do with "mob business". Then-boss Angelo Bruno, furious with Scarfo, exiled him to Atlantic City at a time when the once-great resort city was a dying town.

But legalized gambling changed everything in Atlantic City, and Scarfo’s fortunes soared. The Merlino brothers were by Scarfo’s side as he rose through the underworld to eventually assume the position as one of the most violent, homicidal mob bosses in American history.

For most of the 1980s, Scarfo and his mob ruled with an iron fist. Although they were thick as thieves for years, a very paranoid Scarfo demoted his old friend Chuckie Merlino from underboss to soldier. And Yogi Merlino, who had been a capo for Nicky Scarfo, was also removed from power.

In 1988 Scarfo, the Merlino brothers and 14 other gang members were convicted of racketeering and Scarfo’s nephew and underboss, Phil Leonetti, switched sides to become a government witness.

The next year, Nicky Scarfo, the Merlino brothers and five other men were convicted in Pennsylvania of murder. (One of the other five defendants was Joseph Ligambi, whom police now claim runs Philly’s mob. Eight years later the defendants were granted a new trial. In February 1997, they were acquitted and Joe Ligambi was released from prison.)

By 1989, Lawrence "Yogi" Merlino had decided he had had enough with Scarfo and the mob, and he told the feds he was ready to switch sides. He pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges and to a murder charge in Pennsylvania, and was placed in the federal witness protection program inside a prison for 10 years.

Merlino also agreed to testify for the government, but was never called to do so. While Yogi Merlino was in jail, his nephew, Joey, was making his way up ranks of La Cosa Nostra, and Yogi’s own family was struggling to support themselves without him.

Yogi Merlino and his wife, Phyllis, were divorced. Phyllis and son, Joseph N., started one construction company and another son Marco started a second.

Because Yogi Merlino had run a mob-controlled construction company during the casino building boom, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission banned the New Jersey Merlinos from any casino -related project. The commission charged that the Ventnor Merlinos had once offered their mobster cousin, Joey Merlino, a job.

Joey Merlino had remained friendly with his cousins down the Shore, but both the FBI and the New Jersey State Police told the Casino Commission that there were no organized crime links between the companies and the mob. The Casino Control Commission, however, refused to budge, and the Merlinos hired Eddie Jacobs to challenge the decision.

In 1999, while the feds in Philadelphia were busy charging Joey Merlino with such various crimes as being a mob leader, somewhere in the U.S., Yogi Merlino was released from prison, given a new name, a place to live and some help finding a job.

"He only lived three years when he got out of prison. Three years so far from his family and the Shore and everything he grew up with. I knew Yogi way back when," said a mob insider, "and I can’t imagine him living in some suburban split-level house in some boring small town so far from South Philly and so far from Ventnor. That had to be death for him even before he died."