Philly Dame

George Anastasia has been writing about organized and disorganized crime for thirty-five years, covering casino gambling in Atlantic City, mob hits in Philadelphia and criminal prosecutions throughout the country. The Philadelphia Inquirer reporter is the author of five books, including The Last Gangster a New York Times bestseller that chronicles the demise of the Philadelphia mob.

His other books are Blood and Honor which Jimmy Breslin called it “the best gangster book ever written,” the New York Times bestseller The Summer Wind about the Thomas Capano-Anne Marie Fahey murder case; The Goodfella Tapes, and Mobfiles: Mobsters, Molls, and Murder.

His work has appeared in Penthouse, Playboy and The Village Voice. He also has been featured on several network television news magazine reports about organized crime and has worked as a consultant on projects for ABC, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel and National Geographic. George was kind enough to answer a series of questions about his writing. Thank you, George!

You’ve covered the mob for over 25 years for the Philadelphia Inquirer and written four books on the mafia. What draws you to the subject?

(George Anastasia) I think Americans have always been fascinated with the outlaw – Jessie James, Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde – and that the fascination with the Mafia is an extension of that. As an Italian-American I look at the Mafia – or in America actually it’s Cosa Nostra – as the dark side of the Italian-American experience. Cosa Nostra took the positive values of my heritage, things like honor, respect and a fierce sense of family loyalty, and bastardized them to justifiy a code of conduct that is outside the law, corrupt and treacherous.

As a reporter I have always found the topic rich. The stories and the people are fascinating. For all those reasons, I suppose, I was pulled toward writing about the wiseguys. I also benefited from the fact that as a new reporter at the Inquirer in 1976 I was assigned to cover the dawn of casino gambling in Atlantic City. Part of the debate back then was would legalized gaming bring the mob. In fact, the mob already was in Atlantic City. It became part of the story I was covering and then after Angelo Bruno was killed in 1980, things careened out of control and I started to write more and more about the mob and carved out a beat that I’m still working.

I say again and again, as a writer, you can’t make this stuff up any better than it is.

How has your reporting — and coverage of the mafia in general — changed in the past 25 years? Were you ever nervous that what you were writing could provoke violence or cause your sources to stop talking to you?

(George Anastasia) Over the years I’ve gotten better sources and more people know me. In the beginning I would cover trials, arrests, criminal events and try to build off of those things. But sources – both in law enforcement and in the underworld – add another dimension. Stories are still built around those classic questions, who, what, where and when. But I think the question that gets you to the better stories is WHY. In the beginning I could ask that question, but it was very seldom answered. Now, at least some time, I can get an answer.

The only time I had a problem was when John Stanfa was the boss. He was born and raised in Sicily and there they kill prosecutors, investigators, reporters, whoever. He put a hit out on me because he didn’t like some of the things I was writing. But nothing ever came of it, thankfully. And now he’s serving five consecutive life terms. I think that was an aberration and goes back to his origins. Nicky Scarfo never liked me, but he knew that doing anything to a reporter creates more problems than it solves. In the last go around, Joey Merlino and the young guys around him seemed to enjoy the attention. They had adopted that John Gotti celebrity gangster syndrome. What’s the point of being a mobster if nobody knows who you are? It was the antithesis of Angelo Bruno. Bruno’s philosophy was make money, not headlines. Stay in the shadows. Merlino and those guys seemed to crave attention. They were accessible. I had cell phone numbers. I had lunch and dinner with them on occasion. It was a unique situation that I don’t think will ever exist again. But it helped be flesh out and frame stories in ways that I could never do before.

You grew up in South Philadelphia. Did you frequent the library? What books did you like to read when you were younger?

(George Anastasia) I was born in South Philadelphia, but my family moved to South Jersey when I was four. We were part of that great migration to the suburbs. But I had relatives in South Philadelphia and I always had a feel for it. I read a lot of action/adventure stuff when I was young. I think I read all of the James Bond books by Ian Fleming. Then I got into Hemingway. I also read the swashbuckler stories. One of the greatest opening lines of all time was in “Scaramouche” by Rafael Sabatini: “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”

What a great lead! How could you not want to know who the hell this guy was and what he was up to?

Why do you think so many authors draw on the mafia as a source of inspiration for their own fictional work?

(George Anastasia) I was once asked to write a piece about the Sopranos for an anthology. It was Italian-American writers and their take on the show, its popularity and what it said about us and about America. One of the things I said in the piece was that if Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be writing for the Sopranos. Think about it. Whenever Shakespeare wanted to write about passion and humor and people who were a little over the top and who grabbed life with both hands and squeezed as hard as they could, he set his plays in Italy. When he was going for the morose, we got England or Scotland.

I think what Shakespeare found with Italy, many authors today find with the Mafia.

That’s not to say that the Mafia defines Italians. I get into this debate a lot with other Italian-Americans and Italian-American groups who argue that my writing about the Mafia reinforces the stereo-type and that shows like the Sopranos made all Americans think that all Italians are gangsters.

I don’t believe that for a minute. My standard response is that any ethnic group that could give America Antonin Scalia and Camille Paglia in the same generation doesn’t have to worry about Tony Soprano being its poster boy.

If you had to pick one book aside from your own for people to learn about the mafia, what book would you choose?

(George Anastasia) “The Leopard” by Giuseppe Lampedusa. It’s an historic novel about Sicily. And you can’t understand the Mafia unless you understand Sicily.

What are your favorite books to read that are not crime-related?

(George Anastasia) I love all the novels by Jorge Amado, the great Brazilian writer. I like Mario Vargas Llosa’s novels. I just read a novel “City of Thieves” by David Benioff that I thought was great.  “Corelli’s Mandolin” is another favorite. I like some of Richard Russo’s stuff, but not the more recent books. “Straight Man” are the two that I like best.

And finally…you’re stuck with one of Ben Franklin, Betsy Ross, or Thomas Jefferson on a remote island. Who do you pick to spend eternity with, and how do you both get off the island?

(George Anastasia) I pick Ben Franklin. I spent some time in France and I think we’d have a lot to talk about. Also, he’d be smart enough to invent something that would get us off the island.

Thank you so much George. Once again, George is the author the author of five books, including The Last Gangster a New York Times bestseller that chronicles the demise of the Philadelphia mob.

His other books are Blood and Honor which Jimmy Breslin called it “the best gangster book ever written,” the New York Times bestseller The Summer Wind about the Thomas Capano-Anne Marie Fahey murder case; The Goodfella Tapes, and Mobfiles: Mobsters, Molls, and Murder.