November 27-December 3, 2003

city beat

Joey Merlino Predicts a Big Victory

Visiting day with the former mob boss brings hints of a "bombshell."

by Brendan McGarvey

Joey Merlino is gone but he hasn't been forgotten. A visitor to Merlino in the Hudson County prison last week found the jailed mob boss holding up well, wondering about his favorite Philly haunts and predicting a "bombshell" in his upcoming murder trial that will eviscerate the federal government's case against him.

The visitor traveled north to Newark and ventured by taxi through the blighted North Jersey 'burbs to see what's up with the most media-savvy mob boss this side of John Gotti. The prison, located in South Kearny, N.J., is set amid old warehouses and tattered strip malls, near a grimy oil tank farm and the black and greasy Passaic River.

The dirty water is bisected by rust-covered highway bridges and ugly iron train trestles.

It's a landscape familiar to millions of television viewers who watch the opening sequence of The Sopranos. The prison is also near an old factory, just off a long gray street of warehouses and the Naval Reserve building with two white, gigantic anchors framing the doorway.

Merlino passes those monstrous anchors on his frequent rides in the prison van to and from the federal courthouse in Newark. It's the closest he gets to the beach, a constant reminder of summering in Margate, Longport and Atlantic City. There, he once spent long days sunning at the beach and long nights hitting nightclubs and glittering casinos surrounded by a worshipful fan club of friends, fellow gangsters, celebrities and beautiful women.

The prison entrance lies past temporary construction trailers, a parking lot filled with potholes and a guard shack. The building's front is an architectural lie. There are wide glass doors and spruced-up brick walls that, on closer inspection, are merely cinder blocks painted red.

Inside the main lobby, visitors are directed past a glass booth into an outer waiting area that's an institutional light tan, like the inside of an old high-school cafeteria. Three much-abused pay phones line one wall near an alcove with small lockers -- also painted tan -- where visitors stash cell phones, food and other prohibited items before moving through the next checkpoint.

Two county prisoners, in drab khaki uniforms and brightly colored sneakers, haphazardly mop the floor while sneaking peeks at the waiting girlfriends and wives. One male guard stands alongside them, chattering in Spanish to a pretty female guard.

Official signs and posters tell visitors they need a photo driver's license and state or county ID. All minors need both school ID and a birth certificate. Parents are also warned not to let children run around or take cameras, food, drinks, cell phones and other contraband into the visitors room.

Visitors register at a beat-up brown counter before passing through a metal detector on their way into the inner waiting room. Inside that security zone, there's more waiting time.

Perched uncomfortably on the worn tan cushions that cover nicked-up brown benches are the visitors, mostly women and a few children. The majority are Hispanic but there's a smattering of African Americans, a Serbian man with tattoos and bad English, a pretty but cheaply made-up young Russian woman, an Asian woman with a small child and several young Italian and Irish-looking women.

The intercom blares "Merlino, 47" and the visitor heads out of the waiting room, down a long beige hallway and into a large room with more than 70 cubicles. On the other side of each numbered cubicle is a thick Plexiglas window.

Merlino, already holding his phone, waves through the glass at booth 47.

The visitor sits down and picks up a battered black phone.

"You look good," the visitor tells Merlino. "The same. You haven't aged at all."

"I know," Merlino responds. "Jail preserves you."

Back in Merlino's old South Philly neighborhood, there are rumors that the 40-year-old has grown quite fat since going to jail four years ago. But here, Merlino looks almost identical, albeit trimmer, healthier and a little younger.

His black hair is cut short and he wears a dark-blue prison uniform that look more like a surgeon's scrubs than a felon's jailhouse clothes. He has less than 15 minutes because someone else is waiting to split the half-hour allotment.

Merlino wonders about what has happened to some of his favorite nightspots and names some of the new ones that he heard opened in Old City and near Rittenhouse Square since he went away. "I'll be out in six years. I'll be out and back there in six years," he says.

Merlino explains he doesn't allow his wife, Deborah, to bring their two young daughters to visit him in Hudson County because it's very depressing. Plus, he doesn't expect to be here long. (Merlino's wife and kids visited him in federal prison in Texas but since being moved here a month ago to prepare for his upcoming murder trial, Joey has asked Deborah to spare his daughters the trip to such an eyesore of a jail.)

Time is short and Merlino doesn't address the ugly rumors about the alleged relationship between his wife and convicted murderer/drug dealer Billy Rinick. But during the past several months, Merlino has told friends and associates that the gossip about Rinick and Deborah isn't true. He's also told several associates that Rinick only rented a room from the Merlinos, paying Deborah a lot of money for that spare bedroom.

In the no-contact visitors room, the inmates are respectful and friendly to Merlino, who explains that he doesn't talk much because his trial is close. That's because he doesn't want somebody making up conversations and testifying for the feds in exchange for less jail time.

This is the first Thanksgiving in four years that Merlino feels he has something big to be thankful for. That something is Roger Vella, the federal government's key witness in Merlino's upcoming murder trial.

(Merlino and Vincent "Beeps" Centorino are scheduled to be tried in January for the 1996 murder of Newark mobster Joseph Sodano. In July 2001, a federal jury found Merlino guilty of racketeering but found the same murder charge "not proven." Merlino's defense attorneys for the new trial are Eddie Jacobs and Chris Warren.)

Vella, he says, has already lied to the FBI, and everyone -- including gangsters and local law-enforcement investigators -- thinks Vella's tall tales will wreck the prosecution's case.

"I hate it when they say Vella was my driver," Merlino says. "He was, like, a gofer. I didn't even meet him until I got out of jail. I drove my own car. I didn't have a driver. I drove myself most of the time. Anytime you saw me, I was driving myself. Sometimes I'd call the store and ask if somebody was around to drive me or run an errand. Sometimes Vella would say, "Yeah, I can drive him.' But I barely knew him and he wasn't my driver. He liked to hang around but nobody took him seriously. He was just a hang-around. A corner bum."

Merlino says that Vella's own sister, who sometimes hangs out with Merlino's little sister, Natalie, has dissed Vella.

"Wait till we get to trial," Merlino promises. "Eddie Jacobs has a bombshell. It'll blow the government's case wide open. I can't say any more but wait and see. I wish I could tell it. It's going to be unbelievable how bad the government looks."

Merlino isn't worried about former mob boss-turned-government witness Ralph Natale, either. "Ralph is dying to get sentenced. He wants to testify so he can get sentenced. He's going nuts. He wants to get out of jail. He's tired of waiting."

Merlino predicts the jury won't believe Natale's testimony against him, but that Natale will only serve a light sentence before returning to South Jersey. "As soon as Ralph gets out he's going to go right back to dealing drugs. Right back to his life of crime," Merlino predicts.

When visiting time is up, Merlino says, "Thanks for coming up. Come back for the trial. It'll be something! You'll see."

Before the visitor says goodbye and hangs up the phone, Merlino says, "See you in six years."

As the visitor stands up to leave, Merlino smiles confidently and waves goodbye.

Last Friday night, John "Johnny Gongs" Casasanto, a South Philly mob associate, was getting ready to settle in and watch some TV. Somebody dropped in to visit him, and when Casasanto wandered in to the kitchen, that somebody shot him in the back of the head. He was found dead later the next day.

The handsome but violent young gangster -- he was 35 -- was a sometime friend of Joey Merlino. In 1993, when Merlino and friends were battling to overthrow a middle-aged Sicilian named John Stanfa for control of the local mafia, Casasanto was a Merlino loyalist. But he soon felt that Merlino was cheating him out of some extortion money he thought would be split more fairly. He got so pissed off that he decided to switch sides and went over to Stanfa. But soon, Casasanto grew to hate the old-fashioned mob boss and decided to switch back to Merlino's side.

There were some meetings to discuss the details of the treachery but before anything could happen, Casasanto was indicted and pleaded guilty to racketeering. He served eight years and came back to a different mob world in which Joseph Ligambi, allegedly the new boss, wanted everyone to maintain a much lower profile.

But Casasanto loved the nightlife and was seen in Old City clubs and restaurants squiring everyone from beautiful waitresses at The Saloon to the wife of an imprisoned, high-ranking mobster.

To prove his loyalty, Casasanto is said to have gunned down Raymond "Long John" Martorano last year after Martorano, freed from a long prison term, began making noises about taking over the mafia from Ligambi.

But Casasanto was too high-profile for his old wiseguy buddies. He started fights in clubs. He threatened to kill Ruthann Seccio, Ralph Natale's mistress, because Natale had become a government witness. And he was involved in a brawl with members of the 10th and O drug gang at a Delaware Avenue nightclub last June.

Just last month, Casasanto got into an argument with former celebrity Chico DeBarge outside a Philly nightclub. He allegedly stabbed DeBarge -- a singer big in the 1980s -- who suffered only minor wounds.

Police already think they know who shot Casasanto. The suspect is a reputed mob associate who hangs out at the corner store on Ninth and Moore in South Philadelphia. Some of the investigators have nicknamed their suspect "Twitch" because of certain physical attributes of the suspected hit man.

"We know some of the higher-ups in the mob really hated Johnny Gongs," one investigator tells City Paper. "And we know this guy Twitch is somebody we really want to talk to about this murder."

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