From Angelo Bruno to Little Nicky Scarfo
Throughout the 20th Century, the Mafia was well entrenched in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. The Philadelphia organized crime territory extended across the city and into southern New Jersey, and included the lucrative Atlantic City gambling mecca. Over the decades, the mafia often operated in a more violent manner than they did in other parts of the country. However, there was a several decade period when the Bruno Crime family controlled all of the rackets in Philadelphia. During that time, the violence subsided a bit, business was good, and the mafia thrived.
The Beginnings of the Brunos
The Bruno crime family patriarch, Angelo Bruno, emigrated to the United States from Sicily in the early 1900s, and his family settled in Philadelphia. Bruno’s father was a grocer, and as a teen Bruno worked in his store. He attended school briefly, but dropped out at an early age to work instead. Angelo married his childhood sweetheart, Sue Maranca, and remained married to her for the rest of his life.In many ways, Bruno’s rise from immigrant to successful business man appeared to be an American success story.
However, early on, Bruno established ties with organized crime figures in Philadelphia and beyond, and became a gangster in his own right. Bruno’s cousin, John Simone, was a mobster; he helped introduce Bruno to many other prominent mafiosos. Eventually, Bruno formed close ties with the Gambino crime family in New York. Even his wife Sue’s family helped further Bruno’s ties to organized crime and rackets. Sue’s brother, besides being a grocer, also became a successful bootlegger in the Philadelphia area as well.
As a young man, Angelo Bruno quickly became a respected underling of Philadelphia’s reigning crime boss, Salvatore Sabella. Bruno proved himself to be a competent and loyal soldier in the Mafia. He helped set up lucrative gambling rackets in Philadelphia, and made money bootlegging with the help of his brother-in-law, Ralph. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Bruno rose through the ranks of the Philadelphia mob. In 1959, after a brief struggle, Angelo Bruno assumed the reins of organized crime in Philadelphia. The Bruno Crime family would rule the rackets of Philadelphia and South Jersey for the several decades.
The Gentle Don Rules Philadelphia
Philadelphia had been a frontier-town of sorts for organized crime; unlike the rigid order the Five Families imposed on the New York rackets, gangsters in Philly often solved problems by shooting their way through them. Mob violence was common throughout the city, and Angelo Bruno himself had narrowly escaped becoming an assassination target himself at one point prior to assuming control of Philadelphia’s mob network. However, the Bruno crime family changed much of that, and attempted to use their control of the rackets to drive profits instead.
Bruno was a shrewd mob boss. While he was willing to use violence to maintain his family’s grip on power, he eschewed the street violence that had characterized the Philly mob prior to his taking over; this earned him the nickname “the Gentle Don.”. Bruno often used bribery and graft to make it easier for his syndicate to operate in Philadelphia. He controlled the many of the traditional rackets that had made organized crime powerful, such as bookmaking, gambling, and extortion, but refused to deal in the narcotics trade. The Brunos also had exclusive control of lucrative gambling operations in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which further added to the family’s power, prestige and fortune.
Bruno maintained a firm grip on power in Philadelphia for two decades. However, his reluctance to enter the narcotics trade, coupled with his contentious management of the Atlantic City territory, was eventually his undoing. Angelo’s decision to allow New York gangsters to set up shop in Atlantic City – another attempt on Bruno’s part to compromise and keep the peace – set the stage for a violent revolt from within his own organization. On March 21, 1980, Bruno was assassinated with a shotgun blast to the head while sitting in a car outside his Philadelphia home. Many believed that Bruno’s own subordinates ordered the hit due to their dissatisfaction with his decisions on Atlantic City, and Bruno’s refusal to deal narcotics.
The Bruno Crime Family After Angelo
Angelo Bruno’s death started the beginning of a long downward spiral for organized crime
in Philadelphia. A loyal Bruno family soldier, Phillip Testa, took over the family after Bruno was killed. However, Testa himself was assassinated a year later when a nail bomb detonated under his front porch. Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo then took over the family, and would control organized crime in Philadelphia for the next several years.
Little Nicky Scarfo was the antithesis of Angelo Bruno; where Bruno sought compromise and ran the family like a business, Scarfo was reported to be violent and cruel. However, Scarfo also fully the embraced the drug trade, and for some time, the Bruno crime family basked uneasily in the profits. However, the rise in violence under Scarfo led to increased law enforcement scrutiny as well. Ultimately, Scarfo and several top Bruno crime family lieutenants were indicted in the late 1980s, he was convicted of numerous serious crimes, and spent the rest of his life in prison.
After Scarfo’s imprisonment, another internal struggle gripped the Bruno Crime family. Additionally, the RICO act and unrelenting law enforcement pressure further weakened organized crime in Philadelphia in the late 1980s and 1990s. In the mid-1990s, a young mobster named Joey Merlino assumed control of the Bruno Crime family. Despite a decade-long stint in prison following a racketeering conviction in the early 2000s, Merlino is reported to lead the Bruno crime family’s activities to this day.
Parting Thoughts
The Bruno crime family left an enduring and divisive mark on Philadelphia’s history. Even today, Patriarch Angelo Bruno’s legacy is heavily disputed in the city, and pop culture overall. Angelo Bruno has figured prominently in recent movies, such as Legend. In 2016, there was even a drive to turn Bruno’s Philadelphia home into a historical landmark. However, this request was ultimately rejected; despite the prominence of the Mafia in Philadelphia history, the city apparently did not want to bestow honor on the home of a notorious criminal.