October 30-November 5, 2003

city beat

Are You Ready for Some Football?

During the past week, there was a double whammy in the case against mob wannabe Billy Rinick, who's on trial for the Halloween 2001 murder of Adam Finelli. Last week, prosecutors called Skinny Joey Merlino's wife, Deborah, to testify that Rinick didn't stay with her at her home the night of the murder. (Yes, that would be Joseph's former home.)

But, if Rinick was hoping for an alibi, Mrs. Merlino didn't provide it. Rather, she testified that she and the defendant were good friends and when that good friend stayed at her home, he slept either on the couch or another bedroom. (You may recall the scuttlebutt surrounding the Dec. 2001 morning Rinick was found sleeping under the bed during a police raid; a scuttlebutt that had many predicting he'd soon be sleeping wit' the fishes.)

Though she seemed a little tense, Mrs. Merlino was poised, speaking in a deep, movie-star voice before leaving court clutching an expensive Louis Vuitton bag in one hand and her attorney, Brian McMonagle, in the other.

But would this be a true Philly mob story without a little mess? Of course not.

Ruthann Seccio, a friend of Rinick's, was in the courtroom during Mrs. Merlino's testimony. But Seccio, the former mistress of mob boss turned government informant Ralph Natale, was ejected from the courtroom after court officials accused her of glaring at, and making comments to, Joseph's wife as she passed her to and from the witness stand.

Despite the unceremonious removal, eyewitnesses claim Seccio was sitting too far away from Mrs. Merlino to have been heard.

"But if all that weren't enough, when Rinick took the stand in his own defense on Monday, he not only told the jury he didn't kill Finelli, but testified he often babysat Mrs. Merlino's daughters because she was out having an affair with a professional football player from New York. (Hey, at least it wasn't Donovan.) Then, he said he couldn't have been guilty of murder for on the day of the slaying, he drove Mrs. Merlino to Maryland so she could have an abortion."

Sources now tell City Paper the FBI blames a Philadelphia Police Department lawman working an unrelated federal/local task force for tipping off the mayor's office about the City Hall probe.

After the discovery of a listening device in Mayor John Street's second-floor office, Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson claimed the department often swept that room for listening devices. (Sources are also saying that Johnson's son was one of four FBI agents sent to retrieve the device from Street's office that morning.) But from sunny Miami, former Top Cop John Timoney said it wasn't a common occurrence when he was Commish.

Now, according to a source close to Timoney, commissioners past and present aren't speaking. Reporters who saw them at last week's International Association of Chiefs of Police gathering say body language was unmistakable. The pair stood less than three feet apart but didn't speak, shake hands or look at one another.

Timoney likes Johnson but he thinks Johnson lied and is embarrassed for him, one source avers. Plus Timoney's pissed off that he worked so hard to separate the police department from city politics and now it looks like the department is back to playing ball with the politicians.

Johnson tells City Paper rift rumors are inaccurate.

Recent events exposed the on-again, off-again relationship between politics and the criminal underworld. It all starts with The Bug.

The City Hall federal probe seems to be focusing on Mayor Street's top fundraiser, Ronald White, and Imam Shamsud-din Ali.

White grew up in North Philadelphia's Richard Allen Homes and was a gang member who fled for an Ivy League law school before founding a powerful firm and a charity to award scholarships to inner-city kids.

But after the FBI recently raided his offices, it came out that White never registered his charity, Youth Leadership Foundation, Inc., though state law mandates charities soliciting more than $25,000 in donations must do so.

In June, Nathan A. Chapman, a former Foundation head -- and a friend of White's -- who works as a Baltimore bond dealer, was indicted on federal charges of diverting $5 million from a Maryland state pension fund. (Chapman maintains his innocence as he awaits trial).

White also knows Imam Shamsud-din Ali, since he was Ali's divorce lawyer in 1992. And, in 1999, White represented a company run by Ali, the leader of the city's largest mosque.

A day after The Bug's discovery, Ali's home and Keystone Information & Financial Services' office were raided. The Mt. Airy building housing Ali's collection agency is owned by his wife Faridah Ali. (Ironically, Keystone is supposed to go after tax delinquents but Faridah Ali owes the city more than $9,000 in back taxes on the building, records state.)

In January 2001, police arrested Faridah Ali's son, Azeem Spicer, after allegedly finding a semi-automatic pistol and $30,000 worth of grass in his apartment, located above the collection agency. (Though Spicer walked, sources claim the FBI is still investigating. Fox broke a story claiming the FBI is investigating whether the Spicer case was fixed.)

Until 1984, Shamsud-din Ali's name was Clarence Fowler. In 1972, Fowler was convicted of murdering a Baptist minister in North Philly and served five years before his sentence was overturned on a technicality. While in prison, he was part of the Fruit of Islam, a Black Muslim paramilitary force which used violence to enforce its will, sources say. (Ali and his wife refused comment when Underworld visited their Elkins Park home last week.)

Organized-crime files show police believed Fowler controlled Black Muslim prisoners, including some leaders of the ultra-violent Black Mafia. Former Philly cop turned professor and author of Philadelphia's Black Mafia Sean Patrick Griffin says, Authorities alleged that Fowler, a.k.a. Ali, was the one to go see if you were going to prison he could make sure you would not be harmed once you got into prison.

In 1987, cops followed Steve Traitz, then boss of the Roofers Union, to Ali's West Philly mosque where police sources say he went to arrange protection for fellow roofers facing prison.

Sources claim black gangsters have frequented the mosque and that Ali has maintained connections to Muslim prison gangs. Though police admit they don't know whether he still maintains contact with prison gangs, recently retired organized-crime investigators say that in the early '90s, the organized-crime squad was ordered to release files to an all-black team of police investigators. It was thought that African Americans could move more easily in those neighborhoods, gain the trust and get informers and follow what was happening in black organized crime in this city, one says.

Several police sources say that plan didn't pan out.

The black squad never did anything on black organized crime , said one source. So for the last 13 years, while we've been watching Merlino and the newer groups like the Russians and the Chinese, nobody has been keeping track of black organized crime in this city.

While the police department's press office did not return a phone call seeking comment by press time, two law-enforcement sources -- one a current investigator -- watching the federal probe say many of those reputed black gangsters are walking the streets.

You see faces cropping up that were in our old files, says the active investigator. Former black gangsters now hanging around and working in City Hall. How did they get there?

-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there