A Little Humor: Suave Like James Bond

I’ve been an Ian Fleming aficionado since I was a teenager back in the 1960s, as well as fan of the James Bond films, especially the 1960s films starring Sean Connery as Bond.

Gaeton, a big and rugged guy I grew up with, was also a fan of the Bond films, but I could never get him to read the Fleming novels. 

Like me, he strived to be as cool and suave as James Bond, but we both failed to varying degrees in that nearly impossible task. 

I recall Gaeton telling me about his dinner date with a girl he called “classy.” 

He took her to a high-priced restaurant, hoping to impress her and show how sophisticated he was. 

That impression failed at the door of the restaurant. 

“Good evening, Sir. A table for how many?” The maître d asked Gaeton. 

“What?” 

“A table for how many?” 

Gaeton looked at his pretty and classy date and pointed at his chest. 

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I can’t count this high either.” 

Gaeton and his date were showed to a good table thanks to the $20 he slipped the maître de. They sat down and ordered dinner. Gaeton told his date that money was no object, so she could order whatever she wanted. 

An impatient man, Gaeton saw a waiter walk by his table a few minutes later, and he called him over. 

“Excuse me, but are you the waiter who took our order?” 

“Yes, Sir,” the waiter said. 

“Funny, you don’t look a day older.”

The wine waiter then came to the table and without looking at a menu, Gaeton ordered a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne, the favorite drink of his hero James Bond. 

“Very good, Sir. What year?” 

“This year – now!” 

Gaeton told me he was surprised when the girl refused to return his phone calls.

Chinese National Arrested In United States For Alleged Scheme To Illegally Export Semiconductor Manufacturing Machine

The U.S. Justice Department released the below information:

An indictment was unsealed today charging two Chinese nationals, Han Li, also known as Anson Li, 44, and Lin Chen, 64, with crimes related to a conspiracy to illegally export U.S. technology, including a machine manufactured by a California-based company that is used to process silicon wafer microchips, to prohibited end users in China, in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Chen was arrested in Chicago yesterday.

“As alleged, the defendants sought to evade export controls to obtain U.S. semiconductor manufacturing technology for a prohibited Chinese company,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “The Justice Department is committed to enforcing export controls and holding accountable those who seek to illicitly procure U.S.-developed technologies that put our national security at risk.”

“The export restrictions at issue in this case were put in place to prevent the illicit procurement of commodities and technologies for unauthorized military end use in the People’s Republic of China,” said U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey for the Northern District of California. “This office will continue to vigorously enforce the nation’s export laws, including those pertaining to advanced technologies, to protect our national security.”

“This indictment puts an end to Ms. Chen’s alleged involvement in a scheme to illegally export U.S. technology to China,” said Executive Assistant Director Larissa L. Knapp of the FBI’s National Security Branch. “The U.S. does not tolerate illegally exporting our advanced technology, and any attempt to circumvent U.S. laws and regulations will have consequences. The FBI and its partners will continue to seek justice in this matter.”

Federal regulations restrict the export of certain items to companies, research institutions, and other entities identified on the Department of Commerce’s Entity List. In August 2014, the Commerce Department added Changdu GaStone Technology Company (CGTC), a company based in China, to the Entity List. 

As alleged in the indictment, between at least May 2015 and August 2018, Li and Chen conspired to evade the export restrictions imposed by the Department of Commerce on CGTC through the use of intermediaries to conceal CGTC’s involvement with the transactions. Specifically, the defendants sought to illegally obtain a DTX-150 Automatic Diamond Scriber Breaker machine from Dynatex International, a Santa Rosa, California, company. The machine is used to cut thin semiconductors used in electronics, also known as silicon wafers, and under Department of Commerce regulations, requires a license and authorization to export to CGTC. The defendants sought to acquire the machine for CGTC through an intermediary company called Jiangsu Hantang International (JHI), a proxy they fraudulently represented as the purchaser and end user. To avoid detection, Li and Chen instructed Dynatex International to ensure that the export information associated with the sale did not list CGTC as the ultimate consignee of the shipment. 

Li is believed to be in the People’s Republic of China. 

Li and Chen each are charged with the following offenses, and if convicted, face maximum penalties as indicated: Conspiracy to violate IEEPA, up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine; false electronic export information activities, up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine; smuggling, up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine; and IEEPA violations, up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

The FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security are investigating the case.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California and National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case.

An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Discussing the Philadelphia Carjacking Task Force On Dawn Stensland's Philadelphia Talk Radio WPHT 1210 Program

I appeared as a guest today again on Dawn Stensland’s WPHT Talk Radio 1210 program in Philadelphia. 

I was invited on the popular talk show to discuss my recent Broad + Liberty piece on the Philadelphia Carjacking Task Force.

After she talks about tax credits for homemakers and President Trump meeting construction workers outside court, she asked me about my Broad & Liberty piece on carjacking. 

You can listen to the broadcast via the below link: 

Talk Radio 1210 WPHT - The NEW Talk Radio 1210, WPHT. - LISTEN LIVE | Audacy

You can read my Broad & Liberty piece via the below link:

 Paul Davis On Crime: City And Federal Task Force Is Combating Carjacking

Chief Of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti: Navy Has a Lot to Offer Young People

C. Todd Lopez at the DOD News offer a piece on the recruitment of Navy sailors. 

Recruiters across the U.S. military are challenged every day to bring young people into service. But the chief of naval operations said she thinks the Navy has what young people are looking for — if only they knew more about it. 

"All the services are facing some challenges in recruiting, and it's really broader than that," said Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti who spoke yesterday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's probably challenges in just propensity to serve, in general." 

One challenge the Navy has in recruiting, Franchetti said, is that so many young people are simply unaware of what it does. 

"If you don't live near a coast or you don't live near a base, you may not really know what your Navy does every day," she said. "So, talking a little bit about ... operations in the Red Sea, keeping commerce flowing [and] having your Amazon box get to your doorstep, there's a lot of stuff that people don't even recognize every day that your Navy is out there doing." 

Young people, part of Generation Z, are now of age to consider military service, and Franchetti said the Navy must consider what that generation values if they're going to be convinced to enlist in military service. 

"Thinking about what they value, what they're looking for ... in terms of wanting to understand why, wanting to understand the values of the organization, I think we have a really good story to tell, because we're all about honor, courage, commitment, democracy ... and the pursuit of all who threaten it," she said. "But also, it's about helping them become the best version of themselves ... we offer a lot of opportunity, we have 150 different career specialties that they can go into." 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

Franchetti: Navy Has a Lot to Offer Young People > U.S. Department of Defense > Defense Department News

Note: I enlisted in the U.S. Navy when I was 17 in 1970. I served on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War, and later on a Navy harbor tugboat at the nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland.

I traveled halfway around the world during my four years, from Southeast Asia to Europe, and I met people and experienced things that have made me the man I am today.

You can take the boy out of the Navy, but you can’t take the Navy out of the boy.  

My Crime Fiction: 'Byrne's Sitdown'

 The below short story originally appeared in American Crime Magazine in 2023: 

Byrne’s Sitdown 

By Paul Davis 

I was sitting in a booth at the Penrose Diner in South Philadelphia waiting for a friend to join me for lunch. 

I was drinking a cup of the diner's good coffee and looking out the window to see if my friend had arrived when I received a text on my phone that he could not make it. 

Not wanting to hog a booth by myself, I started to pick up my coffee and move to the counter when someone said my name. I looked up and saw Fred Byrne. 

“Paul, you eating alone? Can I join you?” Byrne said. 

“Sure. I was waiting for a friend, but he just texted me that he can’t make it.” 

Byrne, a stocky man with gray hair, was about 70 years old. He was a hardware store owner that I met at a cigar dinner some years ago. He came up to me at the cigar dinner and told me he recognized me from the photo that accompanied my crime column in the local newspaper. He introduced himself and we shook hands. 

As we smoked our fine cigars, we spoke of our military service during the Vietnam War. Byrne had been a Marine at Da Nang in South Vietnam, and I had been a sailor on an aircraft carrier serving on “Yankee Station” in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam. 

I liked him and I gave him my card that had my telephone number and email address on it. He wrote his telephone number and email address on a piece of notepaper and handed it to me. But for whatever reason we never contacted each other. 

The waitress stopped by our table and Byrne and I ordered lunch. Byrne had a copy of the Philadelphia Daily News, a newspaper that I used to sell to sailors, Marines and yard civilians as a teenager in the 1960s down at the old Navy Yard, and I later came to write for. 

He opened the newspaper and showed me an article on the murder of John “Johnny Boy” Grillo, a local mobster who had just been released from federal prison. He had been shot multiple times and died on the street. 

“I read that online this morning,” I said. “I didn’t know him, but I knew his father Dom some years back. I heard the kid was nothing like his father.” 

“I knew them both,” Byrne said. “I knew the father from the neighborhood, but only to say hello to. I knew he was a mob guy, but he was always polite. I knew the kid as he was a friend of my daughter’s. 

“Want to hear a story about my “Sitdown” with Dom over his kid?” 

“Sure,” I replied. 

I didn’t pull out my notebook or my small tape recorder, as I didn’t yet know if he was telling me this story for my crime column, and I didn’t want him to shut him down by asking just yet. 

“Well, it wasn’t a formal “sitdown,” as I wasn’t a member of the mob. Hell, I’m not even Italian. But like I says, Johnny Boy was a friend of my daughter when they was teenagers." 

Our lunch orders arrived and as we ate, Byrne went on to tell me about the time he was returning to his South Philly rowhome years ago. He was accompanied by his friend Mike Fratelli, a Philly detective. 

Byrne’s teenage daughter and wife and gone to the New Jersey shore and were staying at his in-law’s summer home. Byrne had remained in South Philadelphia as he had to work at the hardware store he owned. He met Fratelli, and they had a couple of beers at their favorite corner taproom. 

They walked from the bar to Byrne’s house and when they got there, Fratelli saw that one of the basement windows and been pushed in. Lights were on in the basement, and they heard music. 

"Your family is down the shore, right?” Fratelli asked. 

“Yeah.”

“Give me your house keys and you stay here,” Fratelli said. 

Fratelli took the keys, drew his Glock service firearm, ran up the steps to the front door and let himself in. 

Byrne bent down and looked in the busted basement window and saw about four or five teenage boys and girls drinking his liquor from his basement bar and dancing to the music from his radio. 

Byrne, who had a license to carry a firearm, drew his 9mm Beretta and pointed it at the group in his basement. 

“Get the hell out of my house, you punks,” Byrne yelled. 

“Fuck you,” one of the boys said. 

Byrne fired a round into his basement wall away from the teenagers as a warning shot. The teenagers ran up the basement stairs in fright and straight into the arms of Fratelli. Fratelli herded the teenagers out the front door and onto the sidewalk. 

“We thought you were all at the shore,” one of the girls said. “We just broke in as a goof. We weren’t going to steal anything.” 

“I know you. You’re Janice, my daughter’s friend,” Byrne said. “What the hell do all of you think you are were doing?” 

One of the boys, a big and husky teenager, rushed Byrne and pushed him up against the wall. Byrne slapped the teenager across the back of his head and face with his Beretta. The kid fell to the sidewalk bleeding. 

“You killed Johnny Boy,” Janice cried out. 

The kid stood up and placed his hand on the back of his head. Byrne told the teenagers to get lost. He told them to never see his daughter again. 

“That kid was Dom Grillo’s kid,” Fratelli said as the teenagers walked away. 

“He shouldn’t have broken into my house.” 

 

The following evening, Janice and her father visited Byrne. The father apologized for his daughter’s behavior and pleaded with Byrne to not have his teenage daughter arrested. Byrne told the man he did not plan to press charges. 

The father thanked Byrne and assured him that his daughter would be punished. 

The two men shook hands as Janice looked down in shame and embarrassment. 

While at work the next day, a neighborhood hoodlum strolled into his hardware store and approached Byrne. Byrne’s hand reached behind his back to the holster that held his Beretta. 

The man smiled and said that Dom Grillo wanted to buy him a drink at a local bar that night at eight o’clock. 

“Tell him I’ll be there.”

 

Promptly at eight, Byrne walked into the dimly lit bar with Fratelli. They began to walk to the back of the bar where Dom Grillo was sitting with his son. 

A young hoodlum stepped in the way and asked if they were armed. 

“Hell, yeah. I got a gun on me,” Byrne said. “And I’m a Marine, so I know how to use it.” 

“I’m a cop, so you know I’m packing,” Fratelli said. 

“Let ‘em through,” Dom Grillo said. 

Grillo, a lean, rugged and gruff man in his 60s, was a captain, or capo, in the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family. He controlled illegal gambling and loan sharking in the neighborhood. But having faced the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers in close-quarter combat, Byrne was not intimidated by Grillo or any other gangster.

 “Sit down,” Grillo offered. 

Byrne and Fratelli sat down across from Grillo and his son, whose head were bandaged. 

“I see you brought Mike the cop with you,” Grillo said. 

“Yeah, he’s my friend and he was with me when we caught your son and the other kids in my house.” 

“And you felt you had to pistol-whip my son because he broke into your house.” 

“He attacked me. So yeah, I was defending myself. I could have shot him.” 

“This true?” Grillo asked Fratelli. 

“Yeah,” Fratelli asked. 

Grillo turned his head and faced his son. 

“Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” 

"This crazy guy threatened us with a gun, so I rushed him and …” 

“Shut up now.” Grillo ordered. “You broke into the man’s house. He had the right to shoot you. Perhaps he should have.” 

Johnny Boy Grillo sat back and remained quiet. 

“I’m truly sorry for my boy’s rash and stupid behavior, and I’m grateful that you didn’t shoot him. I hear you are a decent man, and I hear you was a Marine, so I respect you.

 “Let me pay for the damage to your home,” Grillo said. 

“I own manage a hardware store, so the repairs got done. I don’t need or want any money.” 

Grillo rose and shook Byrne’s hand. 

“Even after this, Johnny Boy still went on to be a pain in the ass to his father. He followed his dad into the mob and the dad had to get him outta of jams," Byrne said as the Penrose busboy cleared away our dishes.

“The kid was always mouthing off to people and making trouble for his father. I think the old man was glad that Johnny Boy was put in prison. Old Dom got to spend his last years not worrying about his stupid son.” 

Byrne added that he was not surprised that someone shot and killed Johnny Boy Grillo the minute he walked out of prison.  

“Apparently, he didn’t get the kind of homecoming he expected,” I said. 

© 2023 Paul Davis 

HBO's 'The Sympathizer' And The Real Vietnam Spy.

I consider the Vietnam War to be my war, as World War II was my father’s war, although I played only a minor role in the conflict.

I was a teenage sailor on the USS Kitty Hawk as the aircraft carrier launched combat sorties from “Yankee Station” in the gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam in 1970-1971. The Kitty Hawk also operated off South Vietnam and made a port of call to Da Nang, South Vietnam. 

I’ve long been interested in the Vietnam War, and I’ve read nearly every book - history, memoir, and novel - about the war. I’ve also watched the films, although I’ve often been disappointed by them.

As a writer, I’ve interviewed many Vietnam War veterans over the years, including aircraft carrier pilots, Army helicopter pilots, Navy SEALs, Green Berets, Army and Marine infantry grunts, CIA officers and journalists who covered the war.

So, due to my interest in the Vietnam War, I’m watching The Sympathizer on HBO’s MAX channel.

I’m enjoying the series, just as I enjoyed Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 novel, which the series is based on.

Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, part spy thriller, part satire, was interesting and unique, portraying the Vietnam War (or the American War, as the Communist Vietnamese called the conflict) from the Vietnamese point of view. The debut novel won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize.

Nguyen, a university professor, was born in Vietnam, but he grew up in America.    

The novel’s (and the TV series) narrator, a nameless character known only as “the Captain,” is a South Vietnamese Army captain, Viet Cong spy and conflicted communist sympathizer.

The fictional character has often been compared to a real Vietnamese spy, Pham Xuan An (seen in the below photo).

You can read my Crime Beat column on the real Vietnam spy via the below link:  

Paul Davis On Crime: A Look Back At The Vietnam Spy Who Betrayed Us

You can also read about the USS Kitty Hawk on Yankee Station via the below links:

Paul Davis On Crime: On Yankee Station: A Look Back At The Aircraft Carrier USS Kitty Hawk During The Vietnam War, 1970-1971

Paul Davis On Crime: Chapter 12: On Yankee Station

City And Federal Task Force Is Combating Carjacking

Broad & Liberty ran my piece on carjacking today.

You can read the piece via the below link or the below text:

Paul Davis: City and federal task force is combating carjacking (broadandliberty.com)

I noted here in a previous piece, I have a friend who was carjacked by gunpoint some months ago when he was picking up his daughter from her workplace late one evening.

He’s a tough South Philly guy, hardly a snowflake, but he is still traumatized over the incident, although he did not use the word traumatized.

He told me that he remains bothered over the carjacking, wondering if he should have drawn his legally carried firearm and defended himself and his car.

“The car was insured, but in the car were personal items and I hate that these two creeps took them from me,” my friend said. “I could have blasted the one who came to my car window and pointed a gun at me, but I’m not sure I would have got the second one.”

He said he worried that his daughter might have been hit with a stray bullet when she walked out into the street, so he got out of his car and handed over his car keys. 

“They were kids, teenagers, and we know they can’t shoot for shit, holding the gun sideways like they do in the movies. I thought these idiots would shoot at me and hit my daughter.” 

I mentioned to my friend that city and federal law enforcement recently held a press conference to highlight the impact of their two-year task force on carjacking in the city. 

“I hope they can put an end to this violent crime and make sure nobody else becomes a victim like me,” he said. “I just hate being a crime victim.”     

On April 12th, Jaqueline C. Romero, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, held a press conference along with Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel, ATF Philadelphia Special Agent in Charge Eric J. DeGree, and FBI Philadelphia Special Agent in Charge Wayne A. Jacobs, the leaders of the law enforcement agencies that comprise the Philadelphia Carjacking Task Force.

The law enforcement officials at the press conference spoke of the benefits of the task force partnership, the task force’s several significant investigations. and accomplishments over the past two years. 

U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero spoke of the number of carjackings in Philadelphia. After hitting a historical high of 1,311 in 2022, it dropped 31 percent to 900 in 2023. In addition, the numbers for the first quarter of 2024 are indicative of another marked decline from last year.

She said that from January 2022 through March 2024, 59 cases investigated by the Carjacking Task Force have resulted in federal charges, with a total of 103 defendants federally charged in connection with 121 individual carjackings.

Romero also discussed recent case developments, such as the sentencing of Dashawn Pringle to 10½ years in prison for two armed carjackings and the guilty plea of John Nusslein to two carjackings, including one where an elderly delivery driver was fatally beaten, resulting in a potential sentence of 25 years in prison. She also noted the guilty pleas of Angel Fayez and Kevin Antun to a crime spree that began with a carjacking. According to Romero, Fayez and Antun are now facing mandatory minimum sentences of seven years in prison, and statutory maximum sentences of life in prison.

“We want our community to know that significant strides are being made on their behalf by the Philadelphia Carjacking Task Force,” Romero said. “At the same time, we want carjackers, and would-be carjackers, to know that we can and have charged defendants as young as eighteen years old federally, and in the cases we’ve prosecuted, we’ve obtained some very significant sentences. Carjacking defendants routinely receive sentences of seven to fifteen years — and can even face up to a lifetime of imprisonment in some cases.”

ATF Special Agent in Charge DeGree talked about ATF’s role on the task force, providing investigators and employing ATF’s crime gun intelligence tools. He also highlighted one of the agency’s key cases, in which Tarik Chambers and Kikeem Leach-Hilton committed three back-to-back carjackings, then crashed into and critically injured an elderly driver while fleeing from police. The men were sentenced to more than eighteen years in prison. Two other defendants in the same carjacking crew, Rashad Johnson-Price and Khasir Lynch, have pleaded guilty to additional carjackings; each faces about a decade in federal prison when sentenced.

“Our team of ATF special agents are working tirelessly with our partners in the Philadelphia Carjacking Task Force to seek justice and prevent these dangerous crimes,” DeGree said. “Carjacking is not only a deadly dangerous crime, it is a serious federal offense, carrying lengthy federal prison sentences, even for first-time offenders.”

FBI Special Agent in Charge Jacobs spoke of the cases of Shamire Young and Robert Riles. Jacobs said Young and three co-conspirators committed a carjacking at gunpoint in Northwest Philadelphia, pistol-whipping one of the victims. Young pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven years behind bars. Riles and two co-conspirators committed a carjacking at gunpoint of a mother and daughter in West Philadelphia, with Riles pleading guilty and receiving a sentence of more than eleven years in prison.

“Whether a single subject or a group of subjects — with criminal history or without — the message is simple. Your actions have consequences,” Jacobs said.  “No matter who you are, the FBI and each agency on this task force will hold you to account.”

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Bethel spoke of the decrease in carjackings in the city over the last two years, crediting the work of the task force for getting numerous violent offenders off the street. Bethel spoke of the importance of partnerships like the Carjacking Task Force and how local and federal authorities must work together to reduce violent crime.

The success of the task force, with the U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecuting the carjackers in federal court rather than having Philadelphia District Attorney Larry “Let ‘Em Loose” Krasner prosecute them, is a step in the right direction. 

There are still carjackings, to be sure, but the feds, along with the Philadelphia Police, can cause would-be-carjackers to pause, and they can put the violent carjackers in federal prison. 

Paul Davis, a Philadelphia writer and frequent contributor to Broad + Liberty, also contributes to Counterterrorism magazine and writes the “On Crime” column for the Washington Times. He can be reached at pauldavisoncrime.com.

Japan-Based Sailor Convicted Of Attempted Espionage At Court-Martial In San Diego

Alex Wilson at the Stars and Stripes reports on the court-martial of an American sailor of attempted espionage. 

A sailor accused of giving classified information to an unidentified foreign government was convicted Friday during a general court-martial at Naval Station San Diego. 

Chief Petty Officer Bryce Pedicini (seen in the above photo), a fire controlman who had been assigned to the Japan-based guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins, was found guilty of attempted espionage, failure to obey a lawful order and attempted violation of a lawful general order, according to a statement from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. 

“This guilty verdict holds Mr. Pedicini to account for his betrayal of his country and fellow service members,” NCIS director Omar Lopez said in the statement. “Adversaries of the United States are unrelenting in their attempts to degrade our military superiority.” 

You can read the rest of the story piece via the below link:

Japan-based sailor convicted of attempted espionage at court-martial in San Diego | Stars and Stripes

Philadelphia Man Who Orchestrated The Straw Purchase And Resale Of Over 60 Guns Is Sentenced To 10 Years in Prison: Many Of The Guns Were Used In Shootings and Other Crimes

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia released the below information:

PHILADELPHIA – United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero announced that Mister Tyrell Taylor, 29, of Philadelphia, PA, was sentenced today by United States District Court Judge Gerald J. Pappert to 120 months’ imprisonment, three years of supervised release, and a $2,800 special assessment, for directing people to straw purchase guns and then reselling those weapons on the streets of Philadelphia.

Taylor and his co-conspirators illegally purchased well over 60 firearms in less than six months from gun stores in the Philadelphia area. More than 20 of those firearms were recovered after being used in crimes, including at least nine guns that were used in shootings. Some of the guns were converted to fully automatic firing, some had large-capacity magazines, and some had obliterated serial numbers.

On June 20, 2023, Taylor was charged in a 28-count indictment with conspiracy and aiding and abetting false statements to a federal firearms licensee. On November 2, 2023, the defendant pleaded guilty to all charges against him.

“Philadelphia is already awash in illegal guns and Taylor flooded the streets with over 60 more,” said U.S. Attorney Romero. “We know that many of these weapons were sold to convicted felons who weren’t allowed to have them, and a number were used in violent crimes. The straw-purchasing and trafficking of firearms like this directly contributes to our city’s gun violence crisis and its ever-growing list of victims. I hope that Taylor’s lengthy sentence sends a message that these are very serious crimes, and their perpetrators will be held fully accountable.”

“As this case vividly demonstrates, trafficking firearms puts guns in the hands of dangerous criminals,” said Eric J. DeGree, Special Agent in Charge of the ATF’s Philadelphia Field Division. “Too often we find that the guns used in shootings and recovered in crime scenes were illegally obtained through straw purchases. Buying a gun for someone who isn’t allowed to have one puts your neighbors, friends, and families at risk. It is also a federal offense that can land you in prison for years.”

This case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and gun violence, and to make our neighborhoods safer for everyone. On May 26, 2021, the department launched a violent crime reduction strategy strengthening PSN based on these core principles: fostering trust and legitimacy in our communities, supporting community-based organizations that help prevent violence from occurring in the first place, setting focused and strategic enforcement priorities, and measuring the results.

The case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and prosecuted by Special Assistant United States Attorney Alexander B. Bowerman and Assistant United States Attorney Justin Oshana.

My Crime Fiction: 'Murder By The Park'

 The below short story originally appeared in American Crime Magazine in 2021. 

"Murder By The Park" 

By Paul Davis 

“I’m a criminal,” the man at the bar said to me as a way of introduction. He said this as nonchalantly as if he stating he was a salesman or a lawyer. 

I was at the bar talking to an old friend from the old neighborhood in South Philadelphia when the 30ish, dark-haired, thin and short man approached me and asked if I wrote the crime column for the local newspaper. He said he recognized me from my column photo.   

I said yes. The man introduced himself and said he read my column on a recent murder by a nearby park. 

"The story was really good. Really interesting," the man said. 

I thanked him, he shook my hand, and he rejoined his friends at the other end of the bar. 

The column the man at the bar liked was about the murder of a drug dealer whose body had been discovered in a car parked next to the park at 13^th and Oregon Avenue. 

The story interested me as I grew up at 13^th and Oregon. Murders in that middle-class, predominantly Italian-American neighborhood were rare. And I played sports in that park as a teenager and, frankly, I did somewhat less wholesome things with girls in the park after dark. 

After the man walked away, my friend told me the man was Anthony “Tony Banana” Venditto, a local thug. My friend explained that he was called “Tony Banana,” as all of his friends described him as a banana, a South Philly euphemism for an insane person or a goof. 

I was later informed by a Philadelphia detective I knew that Venditto was the prime suspect in the murder of the drug dealer found next to the park. Small wonder that he found my column about the murder so interesting. 

The detective filled me in on the story of Venditto and the murder by the park.

 

Venditto was proud of being a criminal. His life-long goal was to be a “made man” in the Philadelphia-South Jersey Cosa Nostra crime family. But because he was, as his nickname indicated, a banana, he didn’t stand a chance. 

Venditto had a police record with multiple arrests and two convictions. He was convicted on two separate burglaries, and he was given parole on the first and served two years in Graterford State Prison for the second. He had been briefly married, but his wife divorced him while he was in prison. 

Venditto hung around a mob crew in the neighborhood, and they used him for assorted jobs, such as robbery and extortion. For Venditto, being an associate with the crew was the next best thing to being a made member of the local mob. 

The crew of gamblers, thieves and extortionists spent their usual days at a local bar, gossiping, bragging and scheming. The crew captain, Joseph “Big Joe” Farina, sat at a back table up against a wall and held court all day and some nights, as if he were a king. His crew would report in, hand over money, and linger as Farina, a large, overweight man with sparse gray hair, would sip Sambuca and impart his wisdom and wit to his fellow criminals. 

No one questioned his wisdom, and everyone laughed at his jokes and asides. 

The crew didn’t do much in the way of work. Mostly, they extorted money from other working criminals, such as bookmakers, drug dealers and burglary crews. The crooks paid their “street tax” to the crew as they figured it was the cost of doing business in South Philly. The crooks who didn’t pay had a visit from crew members, who wielded baseball bats or pointed guns. 

Farina waved over Venditto and Salvatore “Sonny” Grillo. Grillo was huge, muscular and tattooed. Standing next to the diminutive Venditto, he appeared even larger. 

“Did you see that drug guy about our money?” Farina asked Grillo. 

The man Farina referred to was John “Opie” Taylor, a South Philly drug dealer who resembled the child actor Ron Howard from the 1960s Andy Griffith TV show. Taylor was told on several occasions that he had to pay a “street tax” to Farina’s crew if he wanted to sell drugs or commit any crime in the neighborhood. 

“I sent him an email.” 

“You did what?” Farina said, slapping the table. 

“I sent him an email, telling him he better get right with us.” 

“Look at you, ya mamaluke. What’s the point of being a big ugly gorilla, when ya gonna send email messages to a guy we want to scare?” 

Grillo stood there, his head held low, and kept quiet. 

“When I was a soldier back in the 1960s we didn't send emails. We looked them in the eye,” Farina told Grillo and Venditto. “We were true gangsters and racketeers then. Now look at what I have to deal with,” Farina said, throwing his hands up in the air in disgust. 

“I’ll handle the guy, Skipper,” Venditto said. 

“Oh yeah? And how will a skinny banana like you do that?” 

“I’ll scare the shit out of him.” 

“All right. But take this mamaluke with you.” 

“Two stunods,” Farina said out loud as Grillo and Venditto left the bar.

 

Venditto and Grillo went to the variety store where Taylor worked. They walked in and told Taylor to come outside with them. Not wanting to cause a scene where he worked, Taylor walked out with the two. 

Venditto pulled a .38 Ruger hammerless revolver out of his jacket pocket and placed it up against Taylor’s side. 

“Where’s your car?” Venditto asked.  

Taylor pointed to the Toyota on the corner. Venditto told Taylor to give the keys to Grillo. 

“Get ina car,” Venditto told the drug dealer. 

Venditto shoved Taylor into the back seat and sat next to him with the gun between them. Grillo drove them to the park at 13^th and Oregon Avenue. Grillo parked the car next to the park on 13^th Street between Oregon Avenue and Johnson Street.  

“You gotta come up with our money,” Venditto told the visibly shaken drug dealer. “We own this city and if you want to make money from drugs, we got to get our tax.” 

“I ain’t making all that much money,” Taylor whined. “Why do you think I’m working in the store?” 

“Bullshit. You got a new car here. So pay up, motherfucker.” 

Taylor grabbed the door handle and attempted to get out and flee. Venditto grabbed his shirt and placed the gun against his chest. He shot Taylor and the drug dealer slid down on the seat. 

The gun blast inside the car deafened the two mobsters. Grillo held his ears in pain. A minute later he said, “What the fuck, Tony?”

“He had it coming. He was disrespectful.” 

Grillo wiped down the steering wheel and door handles with a hankie and the two criminals left the car next to the park with Taylor’s dead body inside. Venditto took off his blood-stained jacket and rolled it up in a ball. They walked the three blocks to the bar.

 

Venditto approached Farina’s table in the back of the bar. 

“I handled the drug guy, boss.” 

“Good. Did you get our money?” 

“No, he didn’t have no money. But I whacked him.” 

“You did what?” 

“He was disrespectful to us, so I shot him.” 

“Is he dead?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Then how the fuck are we supposed to get our money from him, ya fucking banana?” 

Venditto shrugged sheepishly and looked away.

 

A man walking his dog noticed the slumped corpse in the backseat of the parked car and called the police. A 3^rd District patrol officer responded. He looked into the backseat. With blood all over the seat and the floor of the car, he knew the man was dead. 

The officer called his sergeant. The sergeant rolled up and got out of the patrol car. He looked into the back seat and opened the car door. The awful smell of the corpse drove him to step backwards, and he shut the door quickly.

The sergeant called his lieutenant as three more patrol cars pulled up and parked. The lieutenant called South Detectives. 

Two detectives rolled up and stepped out of the car. They peered into the car but didn’t touch anything. One of the detectives interviewed the dog walker as the other detective called Homicide at Police headquarters. 

A crowd of onlookers stood on the sidewalk and gawked and spoke among themselves. 

The uniformed officers tried to stop the onlookers from getting too close to the car and the two detectives walked among the gathered people, asking if they heard or saw anything. 

A half hour later, Detectives Angelo Marino and Charles Magee rolled up and took charge of the investigation. 

The two were veteran homicide detectives and worked as partners for the past five years. Both detectives were in their mid-40s. Marino was a South Philly Italian American. He was a six-footer and well-built former soldier who served in the U.S. Army in Iraq. 

Magee, a Black cop from North Philly, had a squat and solid figure and was of average height. Like Marino, he was a veteran, having served as a Marine in Afghanistan. Both detectives had seen scores of dead bodies and much blood, both overseas and in Philadelphia.

The two detectives watched as the forensics team rolled up, unloaded their gear, and began to examine the crime scene. 

“I live about six blocks from here,” Marino said to Magee. “We don’t see many murders in this neighborhood.” 

“Mob hit?” Magee asked Marino.

“Could be.”

When the forensics team finished, Marino and Magee looked for a wallet on the corpse. The found a wallet in his back pocket and they looked at the name on the driver’s license. Neither detective knew John Taylor. 

Marino and Magee added the Taylor murder to their already overloaded case load. 

 

The forensics report came in and established that fingerprints lifted from the car matched the fingerprints of both Grillo and Venditto, despite Grillo’s wiping down the wheel and door handles with a hankie. 

Marino and Magee ventured out and arrested Grillo and Venditto. 

In police custody, Venditto sat still and said nothing to the detectives. With a smirk on his face, he refused to answer their questions. He also refused to respond to the detectives’ claims they had him dead to rights with fingerprints and witnesses from the variety store who can testify that Grillo and Venditto walked Taylor out of the store and placed him in his car. 

Venditto, acting like a tough guy, sat back and smiled. 

"I want a lawyer," Venditto told the detectives. 

The detectives then laid out their case to Grillo in another room. Grillo sobbed and beat the table with his huge hands.

“I don’t wanna go to prison,” Grillo said. “I can’t do hard time.”  

“Tell us what went down,” Magee said. “And maybe we can help you.” 

So Grillo gave up Venditto.   

Venditto pled guilty on advice of counsel. He was sentenced and shipped off to prison.

Venditto, the man who introduced himself to me as a criminal, said he liked my column on the murder by the park.  

I don’t know what he thought about my follow-up column, which covered his arrest and imprisonment.

© 2021 Paul Davis