Scott- I honestly thought the same thing going back to the Chickie Ciancaglini article. I find your articles on Philly and the website in general to be great, informative, interesting and insightful. For the vast majority of the things that you write, I feel that it is generally pretty on point. Of course there will be speculative parts of your articles being that anyone writing about the Philly Mob has to speculate to a certain point unless you are quoting a direct source/member of the mob. I want to discourage anyone on these boards from being so cynical and critical of these writings because I don't want Scott to be discouraged from writing pieces on Philly especially since he is one of the only ones outside of Dave S and George A to be writing anything of substance on Philly. I would encourage people to be "devil's advocates" or whatever you want to call it for the sake of debate and conversation, but to simply call Scott out for no reason anytime he comes out with something is simply unproductive and not necessary. So in short, Scott, please don't be discouraged by people that appear to have a problem about your articles and please continue to publish on Philly!

Secondly, I wanted to point out that Ray Wagner's father owns Cookie's Tavern on Oregon Ave. This incidently is a big hangout apparently for 10th & O guys as well as mob/connected guys. Sort of an interesting connection. I didn't realize Ray Wags was also a bookmaker, but I did know that Eddie Wags was involved ('08 bust). I wonder how far Ray Wags go in terms of activity within the Merlino crew? I never really knew much about him or saw anything about him until post-Merlino Crew getting sentenced in 2001 and of course his recent role as "bag man" and "body guard". Before this article I sort of just thought of him as close friend bordering "hanger-on"...