The 14th of September 1984, East Pass Avenue, South Philadelphia. Salvi Tester leaves his house dressed in tennis whites. He is 28 years old, 6 feet tall, 210 lb, ruggedly handsome with hazel eyes and dimpled cheeks. He is the most feared hitman in the Philadelphia mob. He has personally killed or ordered the deaths of at least 15 men. He has survived 17 documented assassination attempts, including a shotgun blast that nearly severed his left arm and left him in critical condition. His friends call him

unkillable. The FBI says he wants to be a bad guy in the worst way, and Lord knows he is succeeding. He is the crowned prince of the Philadelphia mob. 6 months away from being named the heir to the top job in a front page Wall Street Journal profile that the entire family has already read. He walks into a candy store on East Pac to meet his best friend in the world, Joseph Ponguri, the man he grew up with, the man he trusted more than anyone alive. Joey Pong is sitting in the back room. Salvi walks

in. He turns to speak to his friend. Behind him, a man named Salvatorei Wayne Grande reaches under the sofa cushion where he has concealed a silenced pistol and shoots Salvi Tester twice in the back of the head. Grande stands up and shoots him several more times in the face to make certain. Tester collapses on the floor of the candy store. His body is hog tied, wrapped, and driven 20 m to a dirt road in Gloucester Township, New Jersey, where it is dumped at the side of the road. At 10:23 p.m., an

anonymous caller reports a body. Police find the crowned prince of the Philadelphia mob lying in the dirt, still in his tennis whites, shot to pieces by his own best friend’s betrayal. His godfather ordered the murder. His godfather’s name was Nicodemo, Little Nikki Scaro. The same man his father Philillip had personally asked with his dying breath already counting down to protect his son. The same man who was made the boy’s godfather specifically because Philip Tester believed it would keep Salvi safe

inside whatever family came after him. The same man who told Philillip yes. Philip Tester had been wrong about only one thing in his entire career. He was wrong about Scaro. This is the complete story of Salvator Salvi Tester and it is one of the most documented and devastating betrayals in the history of American organized crime. Philip Tester, the chicken man, so named because the pock marks from a brutal childhood case of chickenpox never fully healed, though some say it came from his involvement in

the poultry business, was not a warm or glamorous figure. He wore bluecollar clothing. associates said he looked more like a badly dressed plumber than an oldworld dawn. He stood 5’8, weighed 183 lb, had brown hair, brown eyes, a bulbous nose, a thick mustache worn in defiance of actual Kosanostra rules, and dark emotionless eyes that made press photographers physically back away from him at funerals. He was the underboss under Angelo Bruno, the dosile dawn, who had kept Philadelphia at peace for 21

years through negotiation and deliberate restraint. When Bruno was murdered in March 1980, shot in the back of the head on his own front steps by a shotgun blast, the beginning of everything that follows, Philip Tester became boss. He was 56 years old. His son Salvi was 24. Salvi was everything his father was not physically. Crime reporter George Anastasia of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who covered this world for decades, wrote that he was a ruggedly handsome 2110B man with hazel eyes and real long

lashes and dimpled cheeks, who wore his wavy hair out over his ears in typical 1970s fashion, and alternated between tracksuits and double- breasted suits, depending on the occasion. He had been inducted as a maid man in June 1980 in a ceremony his own father conducted. He was 24 years old. The FBI agent who observed him wrote, “He has the breeding for criminal life and he wants to be a bad guy in the worst way.” Philip Tester had arranged something specific for his son before his own death. He had made

Nicodemos Scaro the boy’s godfather. Scaro was 51 years old in 1980. a squat, vain, intensely violent man from the Atlantic City operations who had been exiled there years earlier after stabbing an FBI informant in a dispute over a bar stool. He had been loyal to Bruno. He was loyal now to Philillip and Philip believed that a made man’s godfather carried the specific obligation that the word implies, a second father, a protector. the man who stands for the child at the baptismal font and promises God and the family

that this child will be kept safe. Philip Tester held that belief for exactly 1 year and 12 days. March 15, 1981. Philip Tester returns to his home in South Philadelphia across the street from Steven Gerard Park after a night out. He approaches his front door. A nail bomb planted beneath his porch, rigged with roofing nails to maximize the shrapnel damage to the human body, detonates as he touches the door handle. The explosion tears through him. He is rushed to the hospital. He dies from his wounds. He is 56 years old. The bomb was

ordered by his own underboss Peter Cassella and his own capo Franky Narduchi senior men inside his family who had decided that Bruno’s old order was preferable to the direction Philip was taking things. Cassella flees to Florida. Narduchi stays in South Philadelphia. This is the last mistake Narduchi ever makes. Salvi Tester, 24 years old, buries his father and immediately begins the process of making everyone responsible for the nail bomb pay for it with their lives. Scaro, who takes the boss position after Philip’s

death, gives Salvi his blessing. He promotes him to Capo. He gives him the specific assignment of avenging Philip Ters’s murder and sends him out to do it. What follows is documented in extraordinary detail across Tommy Deljouro’s federal testimony, Nicholas Caramandi’s memoir, and George Anastasia’s Blood and Honor. Salvi personally shoots Chicky Narduchi Senior 10 times in the face, neck, and chest outside his South Philadelphia home. He tracks down Rocco Boom Boom Marinucci, the man who physically detonated the

nail bomb exactly one year after Philip’s death, shoots him dead in a parking lot, and stuffs Marinucci’s mouth with cherry bombs. A specific message addressed to every man who thought about what Rocco did and did not stop it. Over the next 2 years, Salva kills or personally orders the deaths of at least 13 more men connected to his father’s murder. When Karamandi tells him that Naduchi is dead, Salvi responds, “I wish that [ __ ] was alive so I could kill him again. This is how much he hated this man. He had no

mercy on anybody. Business was business, and killing to him was business.” He survives the entire war with the Rickabine faction, the rival crew within the Philadelphia family trying to break from Scaro’s authority during which he is shot multiple times, nearly loses his left arm to a shotgun blast. In July 1982, while sitting on a wooden crate outside a South Philadelphia pizza place, goes back to work before the wound has properly healed and personally dismantles the Rickine faction piece by

piece. One source documents him surviving 17 separate assassination attempts across this period. He is 26 years old. He is simultaneously the most dangerous man in Philadelphia and the man who has done more to consolidate Scaro’s authority than any other single person in the family. Caramandi, who kills alongside him through all of it, says he’d never ask you to do something he wouldn’t do himself. He was right out there with you on murder contracts. He was a guy made for this thing. He loved

it. He lived it. Anastasia goes further. Salvator Tester loved it all. The stalkings, the murders, even the Enrico Rickine suicide. He was the South Philadelphia equivalent of a mainline blue blood. He was born to be a wise guy. The problem with being born to be a wise guy with being the son of the boss, the godson of the new boss, the most celebrated enforcer in the family’s history is that every man who looks at you eventually does the specific arithmetic of what you represent. And in 1984, Nikki Scaro is doing that

arithmetic around the clock. By early 1984, three things have happened that push Scaro past the specific line that separates jealousy from action. The first is the Wall Street Journal. In the spring of 1984, the Wall Street Journal runs a front page profile of Salvi Tester, naming him the heir apparent to the top position in the Philadelphia mob. It is not a criminal record. It is not an FBI report. It is the Wall Street Journal read by every businessman, every public official, every court officer in

the city. The article explicitly names Scaro’s godson as the man waiting to replace him. Scaro reads it. Shortly after the benefit dinner at Palumbo’s restaurant in South Philadelphia, where both men appear, Scaro has Tester told to sit at a different table from the boss and his inner circle. Then Scaro does not invite Tester to his Puerto Rico trip. These are not accidental slights. They are the specific social language of a boss communicating to his inner circle that a man’s status is

changing. The second is the engagement. Tester had been engaged to Maria Merino, the daughter of underboss Salvatore Chucky Molino, Scaro’s own right hand. The engagement represented the specific dynasty logic of the mob at its most explicit. The godfather’s godson marrying the underboss’s daughter, a bloodline binding the two most powerful positions in the family together. In 1984, Tester breaks it off. The documented reason is incompatibility. Caramandi describes Maria demanding French toilets and jacuzzi’s while she

had the house redone. and Salvi, who wanted to live the way his father lived with no use for extravagance, refusing to participate in a lifestyle that felt foreign to everything Philip had modeled. Molino is enraged. He goes to Scaro and asks for permission to kill Tester for the insult. Scaro gives it. Then Molino develops a drinking problem that makes him useless and Scaro demotes him. But the permission has already been granted. The sentence has already been pronounced. It just needs an executive.

The third is the most dangerous of all, the one that nobody in the family says out loud, but everybody understands. Salvi Tester has been building something. He has his own crew. He moves through the city independently. He has relationships with members of the New York families who have been paying attention to what he accomplished during the Rickine War. He is in the documented assessment of every man who later testified about this period getting too big. Deljouro testifies at Scaro’s federal trial. He was forming his own

crew running around the city doing what he wanted. He was generally getting too big. Caramandi says something that goes further. Salvi was very cautious. Every time you shook his hand, he’d bring you in close with his right hand and just pat you down with his left from behind to see if you were carrying a gun. He felt bad vibes. He just couldn’t figure out what was going on. The kiss tells him. At a funeral in South Philadelphia, the timing documented in the detailed Alcatron account. As Salvi says goodbye

to the assembled mob figures outside the funeral parlor, Chucky Molino shakes his hand, grabs his head, and kisses him on the lips for approximately 10 seconds. Caramandi, standing nearby, looks at the other men. They all look at each other. He says, “We said, what the [ __ ] This guy’s nuts.” Salvi’s got a no now. It was the kiss of death. We looked at the expression on Salvi. He was sort of stunned. He just couldn’t figure out what the [ __ ] was going on, but this is how crazy they were. They wanted him to

know. Scaro knows that killing Salvi Tester is not operationally straightforward. He is the best hitman in the family. He has survived 17 attempts. He pats down every man who hugs him. Tommy Deljouro and Fafy Ianella are assigned the contract first. They bring in Caramandi and Charlie as shooters. The job seems impossible. Tesa is too careful, too aware, too professionally calibrated to be caught in a conventional setup. Deljouro andella go back to Scaro. They need someone Tester will not check for a

weapon. Someone Tester will walk toward with his back exposed. Someone Tester trusts completely. There is only one name that fits that description. Joey Pongur. Joseph Joe Pong Pong. Salvi’s childhood friend from South Philadelphia. Made in the same ceremony by the same boss, the man who has been beside him through every war, every funeral, every score. Deljouro finds Punjitori. He tells him directly in the documented UPI trial transcript, “We are going to kill Salvi and you have to help

us set him up.” Punjouri is devastated. He tells Deljouro he thought everything was settled and all right. Deljouro says obviously everything is not all right. Punjour says he will not pull the trigger. Deljouro says he does not have to pull the trigger. He just has to put Salvi in the room. If he refuses, Deljouro tells him his father and his two brothers will be killed. Ptor agrees. His condition that he does not have to be the one to fire is met. Salvatoreé Wayne Grande, who has been waiting for an opportunity like this,

takes the trigger assignment immediately. The plan is constructed around a plausible meeting. Punji tells Ta there is something to discuss at the back of the candy store on East Pac. Tester, who has been feeling the bad vibes, but has also spent his entire adult life trusting Joey Pong above every other man alive, goes. He is dressed for tennis. He is in his own neighborhood. He walks into the back room. Grande is sitting on the couch with the pistol hidden under the cushions beside him. Tester walks in,

nods at Grande, turns to speak to Punjour. The moment his back is to Grande, Grande pulls the pistol, stands and shoots him twice in the back of the head from close range. He shoots him additional times in the face. Tester falls. The room cleans up. The body is hog tied, transported to New Jersey, and left on a dirt road. At 10:23 p.m., the anonymous call comes in. Police find him still in his tennis whites. He is 28 years old. He is the 23rd victim of Philadelphia’s mob war since Angelo Bruno was shot on his front steps in

1980. He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Ye, Pennsylvania, beside his father, Philillip, and his mother, Alfia, who died in 1980 before she could watch either of the men she loved most be killed by the organization they both served.