My Crime Fiction: 'Arnie Animal'

The below story originally appeared in American Crime Magazine.

Arnie Animal

 By Paul Davis

I heard it said in my South Philadelphia neighborhood that young Arnold Muller, aka “Arnie Animal,” was raised on a steady diet of wrought iron and hate.  

His father disappeared shortly after he was born in 1951 and his alcoholic and abusive mother regularly beat her only child, who was a huge boy, with an iron rod.    

Arnie Animal grew up to be a heavy, hulking, vicious and violent man. He was dark and hairy all over, giving him a decidedly simian look. The South Philadelphia street corner boys at Dalton Street and Oregon Avenue, known as the D&O gang, spawned four generations of drug dealers, murderers and assorted criminals. The previous D&O generation used Arnie Animal as an enforcer and the current gang inherited him, although they had little use for the elderly and dimwitted hoodlum.    

The D&O gang, then and now, was tough enough, wild enough and violent enough to stand up to the local Cosa Nostra mob. They refused to pay the mob’s street tax on crime. The D&O also took on the notorious outlaw motorcycle gang called the Renegades. 

Over the years I covered some of the D&O's battles with the mob and outlaw bikers in my crime column in the local paper. 

And it seemed like I was about to write another D&O story after I received a call from Bob Williams, an FBI special agent that I knew well. He said he had a good story for me.

“It’s about Arnold Muller,” he said.

 “Arnie Animal?”

 “You know him?”

 “Yeah, I went to school with him back in the 1960s, and in the 1970s, I’d would see him at the bars and the late hour clubs. He was a drunk, a bad drunk. I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Well,” the FBI agent said. “He’s dead.”

I was intrigued. Williams asked me if I would like to meet a gambler named Steve Alberti. Williams said that Alberti had a story about Muller that I would find interesting. A story, he said, that I would want to use in my column.

Although Alberti was in hiding, the FBI agent gave me his cell number. 

I called Alberti and we agreed to meet at a bar on Passyunk Avenue. Alberti, who was about 35, and tall and lean with dark hair and a prominent hawk nose, walked up to greet me as I entered the darkened bar. He introduced himself and said he recognized me from the photo that accompanied my newspaper column. He then guided me to his table. I noticed that both of his eyes were blackened, and his lower lip was split. As we sat down, he asked me what I was drinking, and I ordered a vodka on the rocks. 

Although we were both from South Philly, I didn’t know the much younger man. But in conversation I came to learn that we knew a good number of people in common, including Arnie Animal. 

After quickly downing several drinks, Alberti told me he was leaving Philadelphia for Florida in a few days, because the local mob was looking to murder him. But before he left, he wanted to tell me the story about his encounters with Muller.  

 "When it comes to Arnie Animal, nothing will surprise me," I said.   

 

Muller and I went to Thomas Junior High School at the same time in the mid-1960s. I remember him as a hulking bully who terrorized most of the kids at the school. The kids bullied by Muller were what we then called “square” kids, as opposed to the cool corner boys we believe we were. I suppose those bullied kids would be called “nerds” today. 

Fortunately for me, Muller was a typical bully at Thomas, and he would pick on only those weaker than himself and those without tough friends. I was certainly weaker than Muller – he was built like a gorilla, nearly as strong as one, and I thought he smelled like one as well. 

But I was friends with some of the young tough guys from the D&O gang, especially my good friend Gerald “Big Jerry” Coppola. Big Jerry was about the same size as Muller, equally strong, and he was a genuine fearless tough guy. But unlike Muller, he was no bully. Muller was afraid of Big Jerry, so due to my friendship with him, Muller did not dare to try and bully me.    

The D&O street gang ran Thomas Junior High School in those days, and although Muller was generally disliked by the D&O hoodlums, they accepted him as a member due to his brute strength, fearsome reputation and fearsome looks. They used him to intimidate rivals and do dirty work. 

In my late teens while in the Navy, and later in my 20s, I was an amateur middleweight boxer, and I could handle myself well both in and out of the ring. But I was not a particularly tough youngster during the years I attended Thomas Junior High School. Having earlier skipped a grade, I was younger and smaller than most of the other students in my class at Thomas. 

I was a class clown at Thomas, and Big Jerry and the other D&O hoodlums thought I was funny. They all laughed at my jokes, sarcastic asides, and my ideas for pranks. And they roared with laughter when I called Muller “Mighty Joe Young.” At first Muller was complimented because of the “mighty” part, but then someone told him that Mighty Joe Young was an oversized gorilla in a movie. Muller was not amused.

Muller was shipped off to a juvenile detention center when we were both in the 9^th grade at Thomas, and I didn’t see or hear of him again until I came home from the Navy in the mid-1970s.

 

Alberti told me that Muller lost a lot of money to him at cards at a local mob clubhouse the week before. Muller was not a good loser. He shouted out that Alberti was cheating, tossed the card table over, and grabbed Alberti’s left thumb, twisting it until it broke. 

“I didn’t have to cheat to beat Arnie Animal at cards,” Alberti explained to me. “He was a lousy poker player. The old guy was dumb as an ox.”  

After Muller broke Alberti’s thumb, Alberti hit Muller in the head with a beer bottle. The other gamblers in the club rushed over and broke up the fight. They pushed Muller out the door and told him to beat it. Then one of the gamblers took Alberti to the emergency room at the Methodist Hospital, where he was treated for a broken thumb, as well as arm and leg injuries. 

The following day, as Alberti was limping down the street supported by a cane, Muller jumped out of a car and charged him. Alberti laid the cane across Muller’s face a good three times, but Muller tore into him, punching him hard in the face and stomach. A store owner who witnessed the beating through his storefront window came out of his shop with a .357 revolver with a four-inch barrel. Muller saw the huge gun and ran to his car and drove off.

That night Alberti went to see Tommy Rosetti, the Cosa Nostra soldier who ran the card game at the mob clubhouse. Alberti told the mobster about Muller attacking him again. Rosetti, angry that Muller had started a fight in the clubhouse and attacked one of his best players, and then attacked him again in public, reported the situation to his capo, or crew captain, at a neighborhood bar.

The mob captain, Anthony “Tony Deuce” Licco, an obese 60-year-old with thick glasses who rarely rose from his claimed chair at the back of the bar, ordered a “sit down” with Alberti and Muller. He also asked Joey Piro, the D&O crew boss, to attend the meeting.  Piro, a short muscular fireplug of a man, accompanied Muller to the sit down.  

At the sit down, Licco told Muller and Alberti that fights in the clubhouse were bad for business. Piro agreed. They drew unwanted attention to the club and the lucrative card games. After Licco and Piro heard both Muller and Alberti's side of the conflict, Piro spoke up and ordered Muller to lay off Alberti. He also told Muller to pay Alberti's medical bills. 

Two days after the sit-down Alberti entered the bar and saw Licco sitting in his chair like a king on a throne. Licco motioned him over.   

“Don’t worry about Arnie Animal no more,” Licco told Alberti. “He was put down by his own people like the mad dog he was.” 

Licco smiled and raised his glass of wine. 

Alberti was later visited by the FBI. The FBI agents informed him that they had captured Licco’s voice on a wiretap ordering Alberti’s murder. According to the wiretap recording, the Cosa Nostra capo and the D&O gang boss had struck a deal.

“Let’s whack em’ both,” the FBI recorded Licco as saying.

         

“I was scared,” Alberti said to me. “I went into hiding. Only the FBI had my number." 

Alberti said the FBI contacted him again and said that a D&O hoodlum named Billy Kelly, a beefy bar bouncer and D&O enforcer, had been arrested on drug trafficking charges. Kelly quickly flipped to the feds. Kelly told the FBI about how Piro led Arnie Animal to a meeting at a closed garage. 

As Muller sat down in a folding chair across from Piro, Kelly placed a rope around Muller’s neck and attempted to strangle him. Piro shot Muller in the chest with a 9mm Beretta. Despite the bullet wound to the chest, Muller, according to Kelly, "went nuts." 

Muller twisted out of the rope around his neck and shoved Kelly into a wall. Muller punched Piro, who fell to the floor as Kelly jumped on Muller's back.

“He fought like a wild animal,” Kelly told the FBI.

While Kelly and Muller fought, Piro got up from the floor, picked up his Beretta and fired two shots point-blank into Muller’s head. Muller dropped to the garage floor with a loud thud.

Kelly told the FBI he dumped Muller's body on a road in South Jersey, and the FBI agents went across the Walt Whitman bridge and recovered it.

Alberti said that Muller was unmarried and had no children or close relatives. He also lacked any true friends.  

“I doubt that Arnie Animal will be missed by anyone,” Alberti said. "Everyone knew he was a crazy violent prick."

Kelly agreed to become a cooperating witness, and he gave the FBI and the U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia some information about the D&O’s criminal activities. But the FBI agents were disappointed to discover that Alberti didn’t know much about the D&O’s drug trafficking operation, or anything major about the South Philly mob.

"I told them FBI guys that I was only a degenerate gambler who played cards at mob clubs. But I don't know nothing about mob stuff."  

But based on the wiretap recording and Kelly's testimony, the FBI arrested Licco and Piro on murder and related charges. 

Alberti finished his drink, got up and shook my hand.

“I’m off to sunny Florida,” he said.  

© 2025 Paul Davis 

Note: You can read my other crime fiction stories via the link below:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction Stories