The story below is another chapter in my work in progress crime novel about Cosa Nostra from South Philly to Sicily.
The story originally appeared
in American Crime Magazine.
The Moonlighter
By Paul Davis
For this weekly interview session with former Philadelphia Cosa Nostra capo and government cooperator Salvatore Stilitano, I asked him to meet me at 13th and Oregon Avenue in South Philadelphia.
I had been meeting Stillitano each week and running our conversations in my crime column in the local paper. The idea was to later compile the columns into a book.
I stood on the corner of 13th and Oregon Avenue and looked across Oregon Avenue at the park where we played basketball, baseball and football when I was a teenager. I remember the many nights I stood here on the corner as a teenager in front of a luncheonette where we hung out nearly every night in the late 1960s.
I recalled how my crowd stood on the corner, sometimes with beer and pot and sometimes with a bunch of young girls we called “crews.” We were known as a party corner.
I saw Stillitano park his car next to the park and watched him walk across the four-lane avenue to meet me. It was Stillitano’s idea that we do a “walk & talk,” like the old Cosa Nostra members did to avoid law enforcement surveillance bugs in the clubhouses.
Although Stillitano and I were about the same age – two old South Philly street guys, one an old mobster and the other an old reporter -- I did not know him from the old days. But Stillitano told me that he knew several of my good friends from 13th & Oregon. He said he stopped here to visit those friends on several occasions during the late 1960s.
Stillitano pulled out two Cohiba cigars, cut the ends off, handed me one and lit mine then his own. We walked over to 2600 S. Iseminger Street, a nice street of rowhouses where I lived until I joined the U.S. Navy when I was 17 in 1970.
Then, while smoking our fine cigars, we turned off Iseminger and turned left on Shunk street and walked to 13th Street. I wanted to see the site where my old bar, the Moonlighter, was located in the early 1970s.
When I returned home from the Navy in 1972 after serving on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War, I discovered that my crowd had moved exactly one block north from the luncheonette on 13th & Oregon to the bar on 13th & Shunk.
Stillitano, who had surprised me by telling me we had teenage friends in common, surprised me again by stating that he too was a regular at the Moonlighter. Stillitano by his own admission, said he was a loud and aggressive young man, so I wondered how I missed meeting him back then.
The Moonlighter was owned and managed by Albert “Al Tuna” Galli, a big and heavy 50-year-old Cosa Nostra associate. Galli was a pleasant man until angered by a customer. He was originally from Altoona, Pennsylvania, hence his nickname, and he moved to South Philly in the early 1960s.
His partner was Gene Urban, an experienced businessman in the bar and music industry from the Fishtown section of Philadelphia. He looked different from the South Philly crowd in this predominantly Italian American neighborhood. With his long and thin blonde hair and droopy mustache, he looked like one of the Allman Brothers, a popular band in the 1970s. Like Galli, Urban was a genuine tough guy that the customers at the Moonlighter respected.
The Moonlighter brought in many of young, pretty girls, as well as the 20-something former South Philly street corner boys that as teenagers were mortal enemies. Many of the street corners gangs battled each other in parks, playgrounds and on the streets during the late 1960s. There were many injuries and even a couple of murders, but in 1972, the corner boys had matured somewhat, and they were then united by drink, drugs and dancing with girls at the great bar.
The former 13th & Oregon street corner crowd considered the Moonlighter to be our bar, as we were the closest corner. And although we were a small corner, and we were considered to be more of a party corner than a combative one, we had several respected tough guys, such as Joe Villotti and Chick and Stevie Saccone.
I recall that Gene Urban, who became a good friend of mine, had a stage built two feet off of the floor at the end of the bar and on weekends he brought in bands that played live music. In front of the stage was a hard wood dance floor where customers danced to the performing bands. This was a few years before recorded dance music would replace live bands in the clubs. (We called the music club music, and I never heard anyone call it Disco).
Even though I was a veteran, I was only 19 and a half and so I was underaged at the time. Twenty-one was the legal drinking age in Pennsylvania, but thankfully Al Tuna and Gene allowed me to drink at the bar, and I was there nearly every night.
Stillitano wanted to talk
about the Moonlighter and how his late father, a Philadelphia Cosa Nostra
capo of the Wildwood, New Jersey crew, and a national boxing promotor, illegal
gambler and fixer for Philadelphia boss Angelo Bruno, became involved in a
dispute at the popular South Philly bar in 1972 between the outlaw motorcycle
club the Renegades and the notorious drug gang from Dalton and Oregon Avenue
known the D&O gang.
Although I later heard about the altercation at the Moonlighter during the summer of 1972, I was away from South Philly attending a summer semester at Pennsylvania State University at State College, PA.
Stillitano puffed on his cigar and pointed at the front of the building that once housed was the old Moonlighter. He spoke of the time three bikers entered the Moonlighter on a Friday night.
“The problem was the Renegades, and the D&O gang were competitors in the heroin drug trade at the time,” Stillitano explained. “Gene did his usual thing and frisked the three bikers and disarmed them. All three bikers carried knives, which Gene placed under the bar.
“Bikers did not usually drink at the Moonlighter, and Al Tuna warned the bikers that he didn’t want any fighting or drug dealing in the bar. The bikers, who knew Al Tuna’s reputation, said they understood. But it was not long before the two drug gangs clashed.”
Stillitano said that a D&O guy, Joesph “Joey D” D’Alo started the fight when one of the bikers asked a neighborhood Italian girl to dance. She said no and the biker shrugged and walked away, but D’Alo took offense and smashed his beer bottle against the back of the biker’s head.
The biker went down and his two friends rushed to his aid. The other D&O gang members jumped in and began to beat the bikers. Gene Urban, Tony Tuna, a bartender, and other customers broke up the fight. The bikers left the bar and threatened to come back in force.
Tony Tuna apologized to the bikers in the doorway and said that Joey D would be banned from the bar, but if they came back looking for trouble, well… Tony Tuna lifted his shirt and showed the bikers the butt of his revolver in a holster.
Thankfully, the Renegades did not return to the bar, but the D&O gang members drove three carloads of the gang to the Renegades’ bar and club house. At four in the morning, four D&O hoodlums aimed their shotguns at the front of the bar and opened fire. No one was in the bar, so no one was injured, but the shotgun blasts caused considerable property damage.
The Renegades’ leader, Roland “Outlaw Santa” Simpson, a 60-year-old, white-haired biker with a long white beard and huge belly who did in fact resemble Santa Claus and even portrayed Santa at a Center City department store during the holidays, spoke to a Cosa Nostra soldier he did business with. He told the mobster that the outlaw bikers were going to retaliate against the D&O gang.
The mobster reported the conversation to the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family boss Angelo Bruno. Bruno was not happy. His soldiers had trouble with the D&O gang in the past. They were fearless and reckless. Bruno’s capos had asked for approval to whack the D&O leaders, but Bruno knew a shooting war was bad for business.
Dead bodies in the street and injured innocent bystanders would cause the newspapers and the TV stations to crusade against violent crime, which would lead the Philly cops and the feds to come down in force and close the mob’s lucrative criminal enterprises.
Bruno knew that a South Philly street war between the bikers and the D&O would be especially violent. Bruno called his capo Nick Stillitano. The capo, called “Nick the Broker,” was known for deescalating disputes.
Nick Stillitano called for a sitdown meeting between Simpson and the D&O’s boss, a 40-year-old grim-faced hoodlum named Rocky Rotta. Stillitano called for the sitdown to be held at the Moonlighter, the scene of the original alteration.
Nick Stillitano arrived at the bar after closing hours at three in the morning. Despite the late hour, Stillitano was impeccably dressed in a dark business suit, a white shirt and black tie. He looked more like a business executive than a mob boss. Walking in behind him was his young son Salvatore, who was a Moonlighter regular and was there during the bar fight.
Tony Tuna welcomed Nick Stillitano with a hug and led him to a table where Outlaw Santa Simpson and Rocky Rotta sat. Noticeably absent from the sitdown were the two combatants, the biker and the D&O gang member.
“My father was smooth, He did not threaten. He did not raise his voice. He did not get emotional. He suggested rather than ordered,” Salvie Stillitano recalled.
Nick Stillitano told Simpson and Rotta that a violent gang war would be bad for everyone’s business. He offered a plan. The D&O would do business in South Philly and in the New Jersey resort shore towns.
The Renegades would operate in the Philly suburbs and the New Jersey towns along the Black Horse Pike before the shore points. Both the Renegades and the D&O gang would pay a small tribute to the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra family.
He also suggested that Rotta discipline Joey D, the instigator of the situation. And he suggested that Simpson keep his bikers away from the Moonlighter and other mobbed-up South Philly bars and clubs in order to prevent similar incidents.
“Done,” Rotta said, quickly realizing that the territory deal would nearly double the drug gang’s income.
Simpson also agreed, knowing how
well the lucrative deal was.
Tony Tuna brought out a bottle, and everyone had a drink to celebrate the new peace.
"So, my dad stopped a major drug gang war in South Philly,” Salvatore Stillitano said to me.
“And Joey D was later whacked in Wildwood. He went to the shore to get away from the trouble, but Rocky Rotta clipped him with a double blast from a shotgun.”
© 2026 Paul Davis
You can read earlier posted 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'
Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Three Soldiers'
Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Jadroll'
Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Up And Coming'
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