Below is my crime fiction
short story The Seventh Street Shooting.
The story originally appeared
in American Crime Magazine.
The Seventh Street Shooting
By Paul Davis
After a late evening dinner
with my wife, I headed upstairs and took a shower.
I shaved under my neatly
trimmed short beard and brushed my teeth. I applied a roll-on deodorant under
my arms and splashed a bit of aftershave on my neck. I walked into my bedroom
and began to dress. I slipped on a pair of dark gray slacks, a black leather
belt, black socks, black Italian leather loafer shoes and a powder blue dress
shirt, sans tie.
I placed my reading glasses in my shirt's pocket, and I placed my gold wedding band
on my finger, and I slipped on my Rolex Submariner watch with the black leather
band on my left wrist. I placed a gold chain over my head, and it fell to my
chest under my shirt. The gold chain held the original U.S. Navy dog tag that
was issued to me way back in February of 1970 when I entered Navy Boot Camp.
The gold chain also held a small, finely carved and detailed Scuba diver.
My beautiful wife, who bought
me the Rolex Submariner watch just prior to our wedding, also bought me the
gold Scuba diver to commemorate her first Scuba diving experience with me in
the U.S. Virgin Islands.
I placed my key ring with my
house and car keys and my other Navy dog tag into my left pants pocket, and my
pocketknife with a short but sharp blade into my right pants pocket. I slipped
a clip-on holster with my .38 hammerless Ruger revolver to my belt on my left
side. If need be, I could cross-draw the gun with my right hand.
I put on my black sports
jacket and placed my slim, black leather long notebook/wallet into my jacket’s
left breast pocket. I placed my mini-tape recorder into my jacket’s right
breast pocket.
I was showered, shaved,
well-dressed, and armed. I was on my way to meet a murderer.
I was meeting Robert “Bobby
Buddha” Regalbuto at a neighborhood bar in South Philly. Regalbuto read my
crime column in the local paper and emailed me using the email address I listed
below the newspaper column. He wrote that he remembered me from school and the
old neighborhood, and he wanted to offer me a story for my column.
I remembered Regalbuto as
well. I recall that he was a violent and half-crazed hoodlum who became a drug
addict and was sent to prison for murder in the 1970s.
As I stood at the bar and
sipped a vodka on the rocks, I watched the front door. Mark Terranova, my good
friend and a retired Philadelphia police detective, sipped his beer at the
other end of the bar. Like me, he was armed. I had mentioned to Mark that I was
meeting Regalbuto in a bar, and he insisted on backing me up from a short
distance.
When Regalbuto walked in the
bar I recognized him immediately, although he was older, grayer and much thinner
than the last time I saw him. He walked up to me and shook my hand. He said that
I had changed, but he recognized me from my photo that accompanied my column.
Regalbuto was a member of the
Dalton Street and Oregon Avenue street corner gang back in the late 1960s. The
teenage gang, known as the “D&O,” was a notorious and troublesome group,
well known to the police and other street corner gangs in South Philadelphia.
I knew Regalbuto as we both
attended Thomas Junior High School together in the mid-1960s, although he was
more than two years older than me. We had several friends in common as I was
good friends with several D&O gang members.
Regalbuto thanked me for
meeting me and suggested we take an empty table at the back of the bar. He
ordered a Ginger Ale from the bartender, explaining to me that he no longer drank,
took drugs or smoked. We sat at the table and Regalbuto began to tell me his
story.
Regalbuto said he moved away
from South Philadelphia some years ago after he was released from prison. He
had served 10 years for shooting and killing a man in a quarrel while both of
them were high on heroin. He was guilty of second-degree murder, he
acknowledged, and he served his time. He told me that he rekindled his Catholic
religion while in prison. And although many years had passed, he now felt
compelled to confess to the police about another murder he committed back in
1968.
Regalbuto spoke of the
Seventh Street shooting that saw two men murdered and several others wounded.
I recall vividly the 1968
murders on Seventh Street in South Philly. I was there.
I’ve seen more than my share
of violence. Growing up in South Philly in the 1960s, I saw a young soldier fresh
from basic training shoot and murder his romantic rival in a hallway in the
South Philadelphia High School. I also witnessed a drive-by shooting that
murdered two young men on a corner on Broad Street.
And later, as a newspaper
crime reporter and columnist, I’ve been on the scene almost immediately after
several murders. I recall drinking in a bar when we heard a car crash. We
rushed out of the bar and saw a car that had crashed into a home on Oregon
Avenue. The driver was slumped over the steering wheel, two bullets in his
head, the latest victim in an internecine mob war in South Philly. And later,
while out for a morning walk, I heard police and ambulance sirens close by, so
I hurried over to a scene where a notorious mob guy had just been shot to death
on his doorstep.
A few years later, while out
on a ride-along with a Philadelphia police sergeant, he was called to the apartment
of a waitress who had been shot and killed. The young woman had been shot
through her mouth, we learned, while playing a sex game with her boyfriend.
But the Seventh Street
shootings were the first murders I ever witnessed.
I was 15 years old going on
16 in 1968. I was a half of hoodlum hanging on the corner of 13th
Street and Oregon Avenue, three block west of the D&O gang’s hangout at George’s
Luncheonette. We were friendly with the D&O teenagers as we all went to
school together and we freely mixed at the teenage dances.
Two of the wildest D&O
hoodlums liked to come to 13th and Oregan and hang out in our
luncheonette, JP’s. Joseph “Crazy Joe” Villotti was “scary crazy,” as one of
the 13th and Oregon Avenue teenagers described him.
Villotti was tall, lean and
muscular with a rough face and dark brown hair. He had a raspy voice and an
insane laugh. He reminded me of a thinner version of the actor Marlon Brando in
the film On the Waterfront.
The teenagers at both the
D&O corner and 13th and Oregan feared being the focus of
Villotti’s attention. Villotti was sadistic and a bully with a warped sense of
humor. He would shake down the focus of his attention, taking their money or
car, and he would also force the teenager to accompany him on some crazy errand.
Thankfully, he never picked
on me as he was afraid of my older brother Eddie. My brother, who stopped
hanging with us on 13th and Oregon Avenue and graduated to hanging out
with our “old heads,” the previous generation who were then in their mid-20s
and went clubbing throughout the city. Eddie, a genuine tough guy, was no bully
and he often defended those who were bullied.
Although Villotti was “bat
shit” crazy, he was sane enough to know that he could not beat my brother, and
a loss to Eddie would hurt his fearsome reputation.
When Villotti visited JP’s,
he was often accompanied by another wild man, a big and heavy teenager named
Robert Regalbuto, known as “Bobby Buddha.”
He was given the nickname by
a teenager who one day saw Regalbuto’s huge bare belly over baggy swim trunks
at the Bellmawr Lake, a man-made lake surrounded by sandy beaches that was a
popular South Jersey resort for South Philly teenagers back in the 1960s.
Having earlier seen a photo in
school of the statue of Buddha with a huge stomach, the teenager began to call
Regalbuto “Bobby Buddha,” and the nickname stuck.
When Villotti and Regalbuto
walked into JP’s, many of the guys stiffened. As I was protected by my
brother’s reputation, I found the two bruisers to be amusing, although I felt
bad for the guys they bullied and abused.
One warm evening, as we stood
on the corner outside of JP’s, Villotti pulled up in a car with Regalbuto and
other D&O hoodlums. Two other cars loaded with D&O gang members pulled
up behind Villotti’s car.
Villotti urged us to get into
a car and follow them to Seventh and Edwin Streets, where they were going to
“fuck up some black guys.” Villotti explained that the black guys had “jumped”
a white guy and put him in the hospital.
One of the D&O guys
opened up his car trunk and handed out baseball bats and pipes to our guys.
Michael “Mikey Head” Tabone took a bat, as did Anthony “Big Man” Manfredi. Harry
“Bud the Dud” Keitel took a five-inch pipe. I didn’t take a weapon as I was the
youngest kid there, and I had no intention of fighting. As an aspiring crime
writer, I got into the car and drove to Seventh Street as I wanted to watch the
fight.
When the four cars screeched
to a halt on Seventh Street, we piled out of the cars, bats and pipes in hand.
Several black guys came out of the candy store. In the lead was a big and
tough-looking guy. I also saw several black guys come out of a bar from across
the street as well as other boys and men from row homes on Edwin Street.
The big, tough looking guy
asked Villotti, “What the fuck, Joe?”
Obviously, the hoodlum knew
Villotti. Villotti responded by pulling out a .45 automatic and shooting the
man in the chest. Regalbuto pulled out a .38 revolver and shot another black
guy.
Pandemonium ensued. The white
and black guys clashed on the street, swinging fists, bats and other weapons.
Tabone, not the bravest of guys, left his car running on the corner and took
off running up Edwin Street. Not too brave myself at the time, I followed
Tabone. About halfway up Edwin Street, a large elderly black woman stood in her
doorway, called me a “white motherfucker,” and threw a large, cast-iron frying
skillet at me.
The skillet hit me on the
right side of my forehead. I fell to my knees and prayed – “Dear God, please
don’t let me pass out.”
Thankfully, I didn’t pass out,
and I was able to get up and run for two more blocks. Then I walked several
more blocks back to 13th and Oregon Avenue.
Tabone beat me home. He was
telling the other teenagers on the corner about the street fight and how
gunshots rang out. He also spoke of beating up a couple of black guys, which
was of course a lie.
I too lied, explaining the
huge lump on my forehead. I told the guys that I was hit by a baseball bat.
“The neighborhood, the
newspapers and the TV all said this was a racial thing,” Regalbuto explained as
we sat in the bar. “Yeah, race relations were not good back then, but the
shooting had nothing to do with race. Me and Joe made a drug deal with Martin
King, known as “The King,” a black heroin dealer who hung out at a candy store
at Seventh and Edwin Streets.
“We bought heroin on credit
from King as we were steady customers of his. We were supposed to sell the dope
and then pay King. But Joe and me were stone cold heroin addicts then, and we
shot up more dope than we sold.”
Regalbuto said that Joe had
the crazy idea of instead of paying King what we owed him, we should just kill
him.
“Joe also had the idea of
making the murder of King look like a race war between the Italians and the
blacks.”
Regalbuto said Villotti
murdered King and he murdered King’s number two, a hoodlum named Billy Jones.
“Villotti was a cold-hearted psychopath,”
Regalbuto said. “He often spoke of the murders with great relish and showed no
regret. I’m different.”
Villotti died of AIDS some
years prior in prison, while Regalbuto said he renewed his faith in Jesus
Christ while serving his sentence. He confessed his murder to a priest and now
he planned to turn himself into the police the following morning.
There was no statute of
limitations on first degree murder.
I wrote about the Seneth
Street shooting in my next newspaper column. I included my own involvement.
This was the first time,
publicly or privately, that I admitted to being beaned with a cast-iron skillet
by an elderly woman and not hit in the head with a baseball bat by a gang member.
© 2025 Paul Davis
Note: You can read my other crime fiction short stories via the link below:
Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction Stories
