If Chickenman Testa Wasn't Murdered?

Would his reign as Philly boss had been as bloodthirsty as Scarfo's? I know Testa started demanding tribute as soon as he was made boss, but would he have been as gung-ho to go after the Riccobenes for instance?

Who knows scarfo was his consigliere right? So if scarfo had his ear. Im sure people woulda go clipped.prolly not as many.salvie would still be alive but him n his dad would b doing life prolly.plus didnt phil testa have a rico trial coming up? Bruno was a part to i believe till they eere killed.only 1person was convicted i believe but i cant remember who atm.gve me a few ill remember

Good Question. Scarfo was a psychopath so i dont know too many bosses who were as bloodthirsty as him beside albert anastasia. However Phil testa could be bloodthirsty when he had to be. Guys like Frankie Sindone felt hsi wrath. Chickie Narducci would have been dead if he hadnt struck first

Yes Testa,Bruno,Chickie Narducci, and Chickie Ciancaglini were all under indictment but since Ciancaglini was the only one left alive he was te only one convicted I believe he got 8 years for it

No..

IMO Phil would of been a pretty decent boss. He was old school and im honestly surprised somebody had the balls to kill him and think they would get away with it. I think Testa would of been cool with Riccobenes old arrangement he had with Bruno. Phil would of definitely killed more often then Bruno would allow but I also dont think he would of been as crazy as scarfo. Scarfo was just a cowboy.

I agree with you HS. I too think he would her gotten along with the Riccobenes. Remember, that whole thing started bc Harry didn't respect Scarfo. Thought he was an interloper. I think Harry would have respected Phil. Would have been a very different decade for the family and probably now too.

he would have went to jail for 10yrs.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this yet but it wouldn't have surprised me in the least if Scarfo eventually made a move on Phil Testa. Poor Phil was a dead man no matter what LOL

Scarfo was Testa's guy. If i remember correctly didn't Leonetti say NY wanted to make Scarfo the boss after Bruno got hit but Scarfo asked them to give it to Testa? Scarfo had alot more connections to the NY guys then Testa supposedly did. Pretty sure thats what Leonetti said but i'd have to doublecheck it to be positive.

Testa was a gangster.....maybe not as homicidal as Scarfo but IMO the bodies would of still been dropping if he lived. Maybe not as many though.

I think Testa would have gotten life in prison then acquitted in appeal for the McCullough murder like the others. However, the time he would be away would be enough for Scarfo to come to the top, so I think everything what had happened under Scarfo in real life would have happened anyway, just some time later.

Scarfo passed up being boss for Testa and was 100% rules first so I doubt he woulda made any "move"

Completely agree. Scarfo didn't kill people to gain power, he killed them to retain power. There is a distinction.

I think Scarfo killed poeple, because like Leonetti said, he simply liked to.

It's also interesting to think of what of might have happened to Salvie Testa as well. Certainly wouldn't have ended up being killed in a candy store, I don't think.

Seemed like Philly had this kind of weird boss reflection going on. First Phil/Salvie Testa then Scarfo/Leonetti.

No matter the reason he killed them for it was all within the rules of LCN and he was anti drug and all about tradition. I'm not saying he was a good boss but he respected the rules above all else and would never make a move against the boss.

Anti drug? But didn't he tax drug dealers? It's basically the same as dealing drugs himself, as he was getting profit from it.

If the Chickenman wasn't murdered, we would have gotten one less Springsteen song .

PB you beat me to it, I was thinking the same thing. Lol

Hey, there's nothing good about that at all!

Phil Testa would have gone to prison for maybe a decade at most with Ciangalini, and Narducci, this is the theory if Casella was not so power hungry. Bruno was the main target in the case.

Had phil testa lived and went to jail it prolly woulda ended up good for the philly fam.hed be getting out as scarfo went in and probably woulda been boss.so no war with merlino and natale NEVER woulda been made and def not fukn boss.philly would prolly actually b a real mafia family now instead a shadow of 1.philly had some rich powerful guys but theres no1with that kinda money now.them days r long gone for philly.

Again there is a distinction. He wasn't dealing drugs and didn't turn a blind eye to those in his family that did. He was simply extorting drug dealers in his territory. Say what you will about Scarfo, but he followed the rules (with the exception of shooting Joe Salerno Sr.- Let's face it, no one follows the rules 100%). None of these guys are choir boys, they all knew the stakes of the game.

Yes, but it's not like he said "you deal in my territory - you die", he not only tollerated drug dealing on his turf, but turned it into a source of profit.

He did not allow drugs in his organization. It would be absurd for any one man or group to proclaim "no more drugs in south Philly!" Also, there is definitely a huge distinction between taxing dealers who are going to operate anyway and dealing drugs yourself.

Well, I don't know. There have been plenty of mafia crimes when to commit them wasn't the boss's idea, when he just limited himself to give the ok. Yet, if it's proven, he can be prosecuted for the crime. So, how it's different with drugs? He didn't distance himself from it, he made profit from it, this makes him an accomplice both morally and juridically. Maybe if you just take a part of laundered money, you get a lesser sentence than you would have gotten had you directly supervised the dealing yourself, yet I wouldn't consider "anti-drug" anybody who launders money from drug traffickers or takes a part of the profit, since these actions encourage more drug dealing. I don't think there has ever been a boss who was REALLY anti-drug, meaning not only forbidding made members to deal, but also not having profit on the side.

scarfo was charged under the kingpin act; not sure if he was convicted of it. Testa was involved in drugs before he became boss. It may have been part of the rift between him and Bruno. I am in no way saying that any of them stood on the corner with nickel bags, but they financed MAJOR drug deals and made profits as a direct result of drug distribution. P2P.

They were charged with running a CCE. Although it was drug related, he was not charged under the Kingpin act (He was acquitted of those charges anyway). Again, he was shaking down drug dealers and taxing the importation and sale of P2P. I think they were charging $2000 per gallon. I'm not saying Scarfo wasn't a piece of shit but he did not allow people in his family to knowingly sell drugs. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but he didn't turn a blind eye like Bruno and Testa.

Exactly jmack. Well put.

Ok, semantics. Technically, I agree that Scarfo was not directly selling drugs. But he was well aware of drug dealing by made members in his organization. Scarfo inducted Long John Martorano. He was a lifelong meth dealer who Bruno never made but kept close to him and collected drug money from. In his book, Crow says he set up a sale of P2P to a guy who would make it to crank and sell it for Crow. That's drug dealing. And Tommy Del/Crow/Charlie White knew the deal. There is a specific line in the book where Crow asks Tommy Del how he's gonna present selling P2P to Scaro because of the drug ban and Tommy Del says Scarfo won't care; a score is a score.

The Scarfo mob directly entered into drug dealing when they graduated from just taxing dealers who were importing P2P and financing other peoples deals to becoming directly involved in the importation and manufacture of meth. Through Del/crow, the mob took control of the P2P importation ring that Chick DiTullio was running with Stevie Vento.

At the time, 2 associates of the mob named Ralph Staino and Mousie Massimino (neither had their button) helped turn everyone from Vento's P2P import ring over to Scarfo, through Tommy Del and the Crow. The failed hit on little Stevie (jailed vento's 18 year old son) probably swayed everyone towards Scarfo, more so than anything.

Mousie wasn't involved in the robbery of P2P in Germany that Staino committed with Kelly. That robbery is what kicked everything off. Mousie's role was to establish a new route to get the P2P into the country. Remember, they cut Kelly out because he was part of Vento's ring and he was the organizer of getting the stuff over here.

No one in the ring was a made guy, until Crow and Del got their hands on it. That's how the feds pinned the charges on Scarfo. The charges likely were weak because Crow and Del both turned and they likely had the most involvement so the feds had to take in on the chin with those charges against Scarfo.

Further, the guys who actually got convicted of P2P importation were not mob guys. They were all guys who wanted to be with the mob and either did their time out of loyalty or FEAR of retribution.

You can picture Scarfo telling Del about the P2P "I don't wanna hear what it is or what it does, just show me the money when you are done doing whatever it is you are going to do with YOUR friend DiTullio. Oh, and by the way, Kill little Stevie Vento because he's not nice".

Scarfo knew what P2P was, what it did, and more importantly, how much money could be made from it. It's much easier to say to Gigante "we sell oil, I don't give a fuck what happens to it after that" than say, we are a big part of the crank production process.

What those guys didn't understand back then but guys with a little real chemistry knowledge did is that while it was great to start with the p2p you really didn't need to buy it...you could easily make it using phenylacetic acid or several other chemicals as your starting chemical. There were guys that all they did was make the p2p and sell it....at one time the price of that shit was so high people were paying thousands for a lousy gallon of the stuff. A gallon would make you in the neighborhood of 10 lb's depending on who was doing the cook.

And then in the 90's all the underground cooks learned how to make better, stronger and cheaper meth using ephedrine or pseudoephedrine instead of p2p and on top of that you didn't need methylamine anymore either, it was already in the ephedrine/pseudo pills. Those guys didn't control shit after that became the popular and MUCH easier way to make speed. Any toothless hillbilly and their mother could make the shit then.

And they still don't control anything anymore. Everyone gets their shit from the mexicans these days.....even most of the 1%er clubs. It's just so much easier and cheaper to get it from them.....they control the meth production now. Not the mob and not the bikers.

[quote=Giancarlo]What those guys didn't understand back then but guys with a little real chemistry knowledge did is that while it was great to start with the p2p you really didn't need to buy it...you could easily make it using phenylacetic acid or several other chemicals as your starting chemical. There were guys that all they did was make the p2p and sell it....at one time the price of that shit was so high people were paying thousands for a lousy gallon of the stuff. A gallon would make you in the neighborhood of 10 lb's depending on who was doing the cook.

And then in the 90's all the underground cooks learned how to make better, stronger and cheaper meth using ephedrine or pseudoephedrine instead of p2p and on top of that you didn't need methylamine anymore either, it was already in the ephedrine/pseudo pills. Those guys didn't control shit after that became the popular and MUCH easier way to make speed. Any toothless hillbilly and their mother could make the shit then.

And they still don't control anything anymore. Everyone gets their shit from the mexicans these days.....even most of the 1%er clubs. It's just so much easier and cheaper to get it from them.....they control the meth production now. Not the mob and not the bikers. [/quote

Yeah but using p2p you'll get crystal meth which is high purity and worth more if you use all that other garbage the purity won't be high enough to make crystals

Not that I know much about the Philly mob, but I'd have to say probably not. Chickenman seems like he was cut from the same bolt of cloth as Bruno. People seemed to like Bruno for the most part. I think Chicken man might have been a good bridge from the Bruno era to the modern era if he had lived.

Listen, I agree with you. We are debating semantics. But since you brought it up, Scarfo warned Long John that he was NOT to sell drugs. Leonetti quotes the meeting in his book. This is where Scarfo learned that Bruno and Testa were selling drugs. I don't think Scarfo got directly involved with the Crow and Del about their activities. I certainly don't believe they told him where the money was coming from. Like I said Scarfo didn't follow every rule perfectly but he was a traditionalist. He followed just as many rules as the old world New York dons.
Scarfo was the last real don of Philly. I think Ligambi had a good run (as acting boss) but let's face it, he was really a captain. That's all. During his reign there weren't many soldiers on the street and they weren't involved in much beyond gambling and loansharking. While he brought stability he lacked real power. They didn't have any real muscle on the street to enforce a street tax and they didn't have any union control. Scarfo controlled Philly and Atlantic City. He had real power and was feared. When Scarfo was awaiting trial a newspaper interviewed a guard. He said it was "yes Mr. Scarfo, no Mr. Scarfo" and this was from the young black inmates. I bet you most of the black inmates at 7th and Arch wouldn't be able to pick Ligambi out of a lineup.

Agreed. Semantics dude. Let's move on because we both agree. Bottom Line is that Scarfo was the last real powerhouse in Philly. Totally agree with you; he was a fucking animal. Yes, it was done through fear and intimidation, but he had the absolute totally backing of NYC. Back then the NYC commission ran LCN. Chicago, LA, other areas are not under their influence, as I am sure some pockets on the east are much less dependent. But, time and time again Leonetti says that Scarfo understood what most others in Philly didn't: NYC makes or breaks a boss. And at the time the commission was Castellano, Gotti, Amuso, Persico, Rastelli, and it was the Chin. That's a powerful group to have on your side or at least to sit at the table with and have a say.

I heard walter white made some quality meth!