Gallery Magazine / October 1981 article by Tony Scaduto "The Mobs Bloody War for Atlantic City". Investigators will never know whose idea it was , but it is clear that Phil Testa got Tony Bananas Caponigro to handle it. leaving Testa safely in the background. Some time after Christmas 1979 , Tony Bananas went up to New York for a meeting with Funzi Tieri. At the meeting according to informers , Caponigro told Tieri that a consensus had been reached within their family - Bruno was no longer fit to command and had to go. Would Tieri back them up ? Right after Bruno"s murder, Frank Sindone was acting like a man wearing a detective's shield. Sindone was running around making a lot of noise and was almost uncontrollable, says Lt. Frank Wallace, who commands the Organized Crime Unit of the Philadelphia police Department. "He (Sindone) starting playing cop, conducting an investigation, and he really shook things up". The afternoon following Bruno's murder Sindone was certain his boss had been killed by traitors in the family and he had a pretty good idea of their identity. He reported his suspicions to John "Johnny Keyes" Simone, also a captain, and demanded that Bruno's killers be punished. Johnny Keyes, 69, was Bruno's cousin and was closer to the Don than any other family member. He (Simone) had also been looking into the murder, but he was more cautious then Sindone. He told Sindone to go slow, and suggested they both question one vital suspect before further action. That suspect was John Stanfa. The next afternoon he was questioned by a ferocious Frank Sindone, with Johnny Keyes looking on, gauging Stanfa's reactions. At first Stanfa cried his denials. Soon though, he apparently said enough to give the two Bruno loyalists the last bit of evidence they needed. They knew who has assassinated their boss. But they weren't certain what they could do about it - and what they learned worried the hell out of them. Behind the family captains who had murdered Angelo Bruno, they had learned, stood a force much stronger then the entire Philadelphia family. That force was Frank "Funzi" Tieri. The plot went forward. But Phil Testa was to cunning to put himself on the firing line. Knowing Bruno loyalists would seek revenge, Testa kept himself at a distance from the men who had propelled the plot to its conclusion. Many of the details of the machinations leading to the murder of Angelo Bruno were figured out by the capo playing cop, Frank Sindone, and by Johnny Keyes. Sindone and Johnny Keyes now went to the Gambino family with their evidence, including the very grave suspicion that behind it all lay the cunning hand of Funzi Tieri. Sindone still so out of control, demanded that the Gambinos live up to their prior agreement to protect the Bruno family - by calling a sit down of the commission and asking for Tieri's death for his illegal, unauthorized, unethical killing of a fellow Don. It isn't believed that a commission meeting was ever called. but Tieri learned of the assassination plot was unraveling, and he did what every intelligent Mafia man does when fingers are pointed: he lied. Tieri told other Mafia bosses that he had been ill - used by the power - hungry Tony Bananas; he had not approved the murder of Angelo Bruno, he claimed, but had only said that he had no right or desire to interfere in an internal family affair. Tieri also said that because he had been conned by these dishonest men from Philadelphia, he would see to their punishment. Phil Testa came up smelling clean, and looking powerful. He gathered together the two factions in the Bruno family and convinced them he had nothing to do with Bruno's death and that family members must close ranks to save the family from the New Yorker's greed. He also convinced them to make him the new Don. But Testa could never feel safe as long as Sindone, the cop playing capo, and Johnny Keyes Simone were still around, because he couldn't be sure how much they knew. He alway's had to worry that these two men, so loyal to Bruno, might deceide that Testa had been a traitor and should be killed. So Testa - perhaps acting on his own, or with the backing of Funzi Tieri, who may have been concerned about the information the two men possessed- passed the death sentence on them.
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