he survived the scarfo era by going to prison
i am not saying he was a bad boss he defo tried to bring the family back after the scarfo mess but it is dysfunctional how a soldier who was supposed to leave the country after being released from prison can end up as boss.
I'm confused. How do you consider it dysfunctional that Stanfa ended up as the boss? Because he went to prison and was supposed to leave the country after being released from prison, like you said? Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does any of that make it dysfunctional? And, how is his prison sentence/possible deportation relevant to any of that?
The family was in complete disarray after the prosecution of Nicky Scarfo and the majority of his top men. The Pennsylvania Crime Commission actually believed/wrote in it's report in one of those years (late 1980's) that it was a strong possibility that the Philadelphia family would be absorbed into either the Gambino or Genovese families at that point. Tony Buck Piccolo was the interim boss - he was offered the title on a full time basis, but he didn't want the troubles or the hassle that came with it. He supported Stanfa being installed as boss; more importantly, Gotti and the Gambino's backed Stanfa into being crowned the new boss in Philadelphia.
If Stanfa didn't have to fight the war with Merlino and his faction he may have ended up as a pretty successful boss with a longer run on the streets. The fighting caused him to be reckless - the simple fact that he needed more men on his side to win the war with Merlino became his ultimate downfall. He ended up bringing in guys that he didn't know enough about and who ultimately couldn't be trusted. On top of that, he was left with junior varsity gangsters that were the remnants of the Scarfo era (ex: Frank Martines). Like I said earlier, the family was decimated pretty badly by the time he inherited the position. He didn't have enough soldiers to fend off the Young Turks, and the guys he ended up bringing in to help him hold on to power actually ended up being the guys who would help to destroy him. In my opinion, Stanfa wasn't given a fair shake. He inherited a family that was basically a small street crew when he took over, and tried to do the best he could to re-build it while fighting a street war at the same time.
@KING6: I agree with your assessment on Stanfa. I think he actually would've had a decent run had he actually had the chance. If he didn't have all the Merlino business then he wouldn't be having all those war meetings at Avena's offices and thus all those tapes wouldn't exist that took him down. However, you could also argue that he was quick to kill anyone for things as small as not paying on time, refusing street tax, or even being George Anastasia. He event had a few murders unrelated to the Merlino war before '93 war broke out so who knows maybe his Sicilian roots would've been too violent for over here and the Feds would've nailed him on those anyways. I'd also add that Stanfa as a boss should have known that he shouldn't be "in the huddle" with his soldiers planning all these hits out with them. He's a boss. Give the hit list to your #2 guy and it does down the ladder. Insulate yourself that's one of the reasons there's a structure for god's sake. Instead he's out there in the street and on these wiretaps talking about cutting tongues and dumping bodies in cement... stupid. Carlo Gambino was never once caught on wiretap in his entire criminal career just to show the polar opposite side. Also KING6, minor detail, but Frank Martines was actually part of Riccobene's crew, which while it was not part of the Scarfo faction, doesn't necessarily mean he was a scrub. Everything I know about, which is not too much, indicates to me that he was pretty solid LCN as were all those Riccobene guys for the most part. They were just part of another crew/faction, but that's something for another conversation (SERP knows what I'm talking about).
If you took the Feds out of the picture and it was a true 1 vs 1, Merlino vs Stanfa, then I think Stanfa would have won. Merlino and those guys didn't have any successful hits besides Felix Bocchino, and that was a blindsided out of nowhere hit so all things considered not that difficult to pull off. They took Joey Chang out of the game, but didn't kill him and the rest were pulled off but no kills. Stanfa got Mikey Chang which was a huge blow to the Merlino faction and a lot of people speculated that it would end the war. Anyways, Merlino got lucky might have even got hit had he not gotten picked up by the Feds and furthermore, lucked out by getting out when he did right after Stanfa and his faction got indicted and picked up on their RICO case.
Finally, you can't compare Detroit to Philly especially today... Sorry.
And GangsterReport, are you really not Scott Burnstein? I'm not asking this to be malicious, I just find it ironic that Scott's old tag name stopped posting and then you immediately popped and and seem to be all about Detroit. Just kind of funny, don't really care, just curious... 
