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News and Features about Organized Crime, Mafia and La Cosa Nostra taken from National and Local News Sources. In an attempt to get you this type of coverage in a timely manner we can not be responsible for the content of the following material. |
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8-11-99 What're you gonna do when all your friends are felons?
by Kitty Caparella Two-and-a-half years in the slammer didn't teach Roger Vella Jr. anything, such as how to avoid a return trip. Even Joey Merlino had Vella's number. On March 25, reputed acting mob boss Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino predicted that Vella, 27, reputed mob associate, mob softball star and convicted drug dealer, wouldn't last at a prison halfway house. Vella in 1997 was sentenced to 41 months in prison on federal drug charges. He was supposed to serve the last three months of his sentence at a halfway house, where he arrived March 8. "Two weeks in the halfway house, he'll be back . . . He won't last," Merlino told Ronald "Fat Rat" Previte, his then-mob capo who secretly recorded the conversation. (One mob watcher noted that Merlino and Previte "planted big wet smackers" on each other at the meeting, which the FBI videotaped and should be playing at Merlino's drug trial.) "He won't f-----' last three weeks," Merlino laughed. "I'm going to drive this nut back to the halfway house," the acting mob boss said. "How the f---'s he gonna be with you goin' to the halfway house?" asked Previte. "He's out of his mind . . . he just don't care," replied Merlino. "He can't wait to get violated [on his probation]." Merlino was right. Yesterday was Vella's one-hour hearing to decide whether to revoke his probation, which U.S. District Judge Thomas O'Neill will decide in a week. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Fritchey called Vella's "defiance" of supervision rules "so open and notorious that it was a joking matter in the underworld." Vella's attorney, Joseph Santaguida, didn't disagree with the government's facts, as outlined in court records, just their interpretation. By May 11, Vella was playing mob softball with convicted felons and mobsters, including Merlino. Six days later, his "insolence" with the halfway house staff got him a one-way ticket back to prison. On June 4, Vella was released from Allenwood federal prison and he had 72 hours to contact his parole officer. By 2 p.m. that afternoon, he had two mob meetings lined up - with reputed mob capo George Borgesi and others. That litany of mob contacts didn't count, defense attorney Joseph Santaguida argued yesterday, because technically Vella wasn't yet on "supervised release." Santaguida regarded the 72-hour period as a kind of free time where Vella could associate with anyone because he hadn't met with his probation officer nor signed a pledge to avoid such felons and mobsters during his six years on "supervised release." After repeated warnings and advising Vella that the Philadelphia police reported his contacts with the mob, federal probation officer Jay Purcell petitioned the judge to revoke Vella's probation. Less than 24 hours after one warning, Vella showed up for Merlino's bail hearing on July 1. Vella's mother, suffering from cancer, testified she asked her son to accompany her, even though Purcell told them both the night before such contacts were prohibited. Fritchey offered three options: Do nothing. Send him back to jail. Or send him back to Kintock Community Corrections Center on Broad Street near Wood. There, he'd be placed in the "Sanctions Center" for six months, required to hold a job and his activities rigidly scrutinized, especially his mob associations. Vella's reaction? "No compromise! No six months!" vowed Vella, of Tree Street near 11th, strutting out of the U.S. District Court yesterday, amidst family and mob associates
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