My Crime Fiction: 'Three Soldiers'

Below is another chapter from my crime novel in progress.

You can read the earlier chapters via the links below:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Rigano Murders'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'From South Philly To Sicily'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Salvie Shotgun'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Nick The Broker'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Upton "Uppercut" Clarke'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Face' 

The below story originally appeared in American Crime Magazine.   

Three Soldiers

 By Paul Davis

The latest installment of my interview sessions with Salvatore Stillitano appeared in my crime column in the local paper and Stillitano, a former Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family caporegime (captain) once known as “Salvie Shotgun,” approved of my telling his story.

At the outset of our interview sessions, Stillitano, a cooperating government witness against his former criminal cohorts, agreed with my idea of writing his life story in a series of newspaper columns, which I would later compile into a book.

For this interview session, we were back in his late grandmother’s row home in South Philadelphia. Stillitano made coffee and I offered him one of my Cohiba cigars.

We drank the good coffee and smoked the fine cigars like the two old school South Philly street guys that we were, although I did not pursue the criminal life like Stillitano. I opted instead for a career first in government and later journalism. After doing security work as a teenager on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War and later as a Defense Department civilian working at the DOD procurement depot in South Philadelphia known locally as the “Quartermaster,” I went on to become a newspaper crime reporter and columnist.

I laid my mini recorder on the table along with my reporter’s notebook and pen and Stillitano launched into telling me another story about his late father, Nunzio “Nick the Broker” Stillitano, who preceded Salvatore as a caporegime in the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family.

Nick Stillitano, who looked more like a businessman than a gangster, was a major boxing promoter nationally and the overseas representative of the Cosa Nostra Commission, was a legend in mob circles before he was murdered in Sicily.

Salvatore graduated from St John Neuman’s Catholic High School in 1970. He rejected his father’s wishes to go to college and become a straight professional of some kind. Having spent the summers in the late 1960s with his father in Wildwood, New Jersey, he developed a desire to join his father in the family tradition, a tradition of crime. His father reluctantly agreed and Salvatore became the fourth generation of Stillitanos who became Cosa Nostra members.     

Salvatore Stillitano spoke of how he became a “made man,” a formal member of Cosa Nostra.

In the early 1970s, Salvatore was working with his father in the Wildwood bar where the elder Stillitano operated his both legitimate and illegitimate businesses. The son and eager student would also travel with his father around the country as Nick the Broker promoted professional boxing matches and occasionally “fixed” fights for Cosa Nostra and associate bookmakers.  

Philadelphia Cosa Nostra boss Angelo Bruno was happy with Nick Stllitano, as were the other Commission members who profited from Stillitnao’s fixed fights and overseas brokered deals.

Things were good, but Nick Stillitano was unaware that three of his soldiers were plotting with a Gambone Cosa Nostra soldier to murder him.       

Ralph “Ralphie Nose” Romano, a member of Stillitano’s Wildwood crew, was meeting regularly with Paul “Paulie Dogs” Ferrari, a soldier under orders from Gambone boss Carmine “Big Carmine” Polino, who was called “The Face” by mobsters due to his large facial features, to sow disruption in Stillitano’s crew. Polino hated Bruno and Stillitano and coveted their gambling operations in New Jersey.

Ferrari listened to Romano’s complaints about how no one in the Wildwood crew saw a penny from their captain’s lucrative boxing bouts or the overseas gambling junkets he arranged for Bruno.

Ferrari, slowly, slyly, suggested that Romano take matters into his own hands, perhaps murdering his captain. Ferrari told Romano that his boss, Polino, would protect him from Bruno reprisals. Polino, Ferraro said, would go to the Commission and state on the record that Stillitano and Bruno were cheating their soldiers.

Romano liked the idea. He spoke to two of his fellow soldiers, Matthew “Matty” Gallo and Thomas “Tommy the Greek” Greco. Ferrari, a slim, dapper man with white hair, convinced Gallo and Greco to join in on the murder plot.

But a week later, Gallo, a short, fat, nervous and sweaty mobster, had second thoughts. He visited Stillitano’s number two, Anthony “Tony Ball-Peen” Gina. He told Gina that he only pretended to go along with the murder plot, so he could report to Gina about it.

“Sure. Good man,” the diminutive Gina, a former fighter for Stillitano, told the sweating soldier, although he didn’t believe a word of it.

Gina told Stillitano and offered to “clip” all three of the soldiers. Stillitano shook his head. He gave a pass to Gallo for informing Gina about the plot and said he and his son Salvatore would take care of the other two.

Gallo told Gino that the soldiers would be meeting later that week at a bar on the Black Horse Pike in New Jersey. Stillitano and his son, along with Dominick “Dom D” Donofrio, Stillitano’s driver and bodyguard, a huge fat man, pulled into the parking lot off of the Black Horse Pike.

“Skipper, let me handle this for you,” Donofrio said to Stillitano. Stillitano smiled and shook his head.

Donofrio, once a heavyweight boxer for Stillitano, had a fearsome reputation. Although outright jovial, he was a particularly viscous killer who never used a gun or knife to murder someone. He beat people to death.       

“I need to do this personally, and Salvatore needs to do this as well. We can handle these sons of Jersey farmers,” Stillitano said.

Donofrio opened the car’s trunk and handed two shotguns to Nick and Salvatore. He took out a third shotgun for himself as backup.

Nick and his son waited behind a parked car in the darkness. A side door to the bar opened and the three soldiers walked out.

Gallo stopped and said he forgot something in the bar and that he would be out in a minute. He horridly stepped back through the side door.

The other two soldiers walked on towards their car when Nick and Salvatore stepped around the parked car and opened up with their shotguns.

The dual blast sent the two soldiers to the gravel in a heap. Then Nick and Salvatore stood over the two prone and bleeding soldiers and blasted them a second time.

They walked over to the car and tossed the shotguns into the trunk. Donofrio closed the trunk and slid into the driver’s seat and drove off. Nick Stillitano and his son walked towards another parked car, got in, started the engine, and drove off.

“This was before they had fuckin’ cameras everywhere,” Salvatore Stillitano said to me, taking a long drag from his cigar. “We got away clean. The cops knew we did it, but they couldn’t prove a fuckin’ thing.”

More importantly, he explained, every mob guy in Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey knew that he and his father did the murders.

The murder of the two soldiers told the mob guys that Nick the Broker was not just a racketeer. He was also a true gangster.

“And I got made after the murders,” Salvatore said.

He said that the ceremony was in held a closed Italian restaurant on Passyunk Avenue in South Philadelphia. Angelo Bruno and all his captains were there. Bruno pricked his finger and burned a picture of a Saint and Salvatore Stillitano took a vow to never betray his Cosa Nostra family.    

 

But years later, he did in fact betray his oath. 

“I broke my vow to Cosa Nostra after my father was murdered and the FBI played me a wiretap tape, and I heard these old bastards - men I thought of as my uncles growing up – planning my murder. 

“So, yeah, I became a cooperating government witness, and I helped to land these old timers in the can.”

 © 2026 Paul Davis