Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Crime Reporter And Author George Anastasia On Biden’s Commuted Sentence Of Philadelphia Murderer Kaboni Savage

Broad & Liberty ran my piece on Crime reporter and author George Anastasia’s take on President Biden’s commutation of Kaboni Savage’s death sentence.

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

Paul Davis: Biden lets Philly murderer Kaboni Savage off of death row

President Biden’s parting gift to America was to pardon or commute the sentences of scores of violent criminals. One of the criminals whose death sentence was commuted to life in prison was Kaboni Savage, a major Philadelphia drug dealer who ordered multiple murders, including the murder of four children.

Retaliating against a former criminal associate-turned FBI witness, Kaboni Savage ordered from his prison cell the firebombing of the witness’s home in 2004. Killed in the fire were the witness’s mother and her fifteen-month-old child, as well as three other children aged ten, twelve, and fifteen.         

The FBI later caught Kaboni Savage on tape in his prison cell laughing and suggesting, “They should stop off and get him some barbecue sauce and pour it on them burnt bitches.”

A jury sentenced Savage to thirteen death sentences. But President Biden overturned the jury’s decision and commuted this mass murderer’s death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

I reached out to veteran crime reporter George Anastasia, the author of several true crime books about the Philadelphia-South Jersey Cosa Nostra organized crime family, including “Blood and Honor,” which the late Jimmy Breslin called the best organized crime book ever written, and “The Goodfella Tapes,” in which he quoted a FBI recording of a elder mob guy who explained to a potential mob litigant “that goodfellas don’t sue goodfellas. Goodfellas kill goodfellas.”

George Anastasia covered the Kaboni Savage case as a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, so I asked him what he thought of Kaboni Savage. 

“He was a monster,” Anastasia replied. “He was a very despicable individual. The firebombing of that house underscored all that and afterwards the feds bugged his cell, and he was joking about it. That’s horrible. 

“Here’s the thing; he was pardoned but all that means is he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison, and you could argue that’s a fitting punishment. He’s not coming home. He is going to spend the rest of his life in horrible confinement. He’s going to be caged up like an animal and that’s exactly what he was, the way he comported himself.”  

True. But in my view, I said to George Anastasia, the death penalty is justified for criminals who commit heinous crimes, such as the ones Savage was convicted of. So I think he should have been executed.

“He got commuted to life without parole,” Anastasia pointed out. “It’s not like he’s walking out the door. Should we have a death sentence? That’s a legitimate argument. But what’s your definition of a heinous crime and what’s mine?

“The jury decided Savage’s crimes were heinous and they sentenced him with the death penalty,” I said. “President Biden overturned the jury’s verdict.”

“That’s the way the system is set up. The system also allows for the commutation of sentences,” Anastasia said. “Here is a horrible individual, probably more violent and more despicable than any mob boss I ever wrote about. One of his famous sayings apparently was ‘no witness, no crime.’”  

I asked Anastasia if Savage will be placed in a federal prison’s general population, or will he end his days in a “supermax” prison, locked down 23 hours a day alongside the cells of cartel drug lords and terrorists.

“The last time I looked he was in Florence, Colorado, which is a supermax. It’s a grim existence.” 

As a reporter, Anastasia covered Kaboni Savage’s trial and provided extensive and excellent coverage of the murderer, so I asked him what he was like in court. 

“He appeared to be a fairly intelligent guy and almost low-key. Savage was a sociopath. There was a contrast between who he was being portrayed as opposed to who was sitting at the table. And then they started playing those horrific tapes. You can’t get around those tapes. He buried himself.”  

Who was Kaboni Savage and what crimes did he commit?

“Kaboni Savage was a North Philly boxer and then a drug dealer. He was very heavily involved in the drug trade, and he had his own organization. One of the intriguing things about the drug underworld of Philadelphia is that it was never monolithic. It’s not like the mob. You have different neighborhoods and different organizations. He rose up in that particular area of North Philadelphia and he had an organization around him, and they were involved in drug dealing. He was a terribly violent individual. 

“One of the first stories I wrote was about Tybius Flowers, who was going to be a witness against him. Kaboni Savage had him killed, again from prison. He put a hit out on him and that case disappeared. That’s where “no witness, no crime” came from. He walked out of jail,” Anastasia explained. 

“The last couple of years I was at the Inquirer, I spent more time writing about the drug underworld than the traditional underworld. If you look at it, those guys had more of a negative impact on the city of Philadelphia than the mob ever did. They literally destroyed neighborhoods, they killed one another, and anybody who got caught in the crossfire. They had no concern for human life. Kaboni Savage epitomized all of that. 

“When he was on the top of his game it was a horrible, horrible existence for a lot of people.” 

I support the death penalty for heinous crimes, but as Anastasia points out, an argument can be made that in a supermax cell for the rest of your life with restricted access to the outside and no hope of release is a more fitting punishment than a swift execution.

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.     

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