Former Colombian Navy Lieutenant Sentenced To 15 Years For Helping Sell Locations Of Navy Drug Interdiction Vessels To International Drug Traffickers

The U.S. Justice Department released the information below:

Cesar Augusto Romero Caballero, of Colombia, was sentenced to 15 years in prison by U.S. District Court Judge James Moody Jr. for conspiracy to distribute cocaine having reasonable cause to believe it would be unlawfully imported into the United States. Romero Caballero pleaded guilty on April 8, 2024.

According to court documents, Caballero, 35, was a former member of the Colombian Navy. In exchange for money, he recruited active-duty members of the Colombian Navy to secretly plant global positioning system (GPS) tracking devices in Colombian Navy vessels. Transnational Criminal Organizations used the location data derived from these tracking devices to direct vessels filled with cocaine bound for the United States around Colombian Navy ships and patrols.

“This foreign national committed serious crimes to enable the flow of drugs into our country,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “This sentencing reflects the Department of Justice’s ironclad commitment to not only hunting down criminals, but ensuring that they suffer severe legal consequences following their apprehension.”

“Our teams focus on sophisticated and violent drug trafficking organizations and work countless investigative hours,” said Special Agent in Charge Deanne L. Reuter of the Drug Enforcement Administration Miami Field Division. “I am proud of our team’s efforts and thankful for our law enforcement partners who brought this case to conclusion.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren Stoia for the Middle District of Florida prosecuted this case.

The Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs and the Criminal Division’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section’s Office of the Judicial Attaché in Bogotá, Colombia, provided significant assistance.

This prosecution is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) Strike Force Initiative, which provides for the establishment of permanent multi-agency task force teams that work side-by-side in the same location. This co-located model enables agents from different agencies to collaborate on intelligence-driven, multi- jurisdictional operations to disrupt and dismantle the most significant drug traffickers, money launderers, gangs, and transnational criminal organizations.

The specific mission of the OCDETF Panama Express Strike Force is to disrupt and dismantle Transnational Criminal Organizations involved in large-scale drug trafficking, money laundering, and related activities. The OCDETF Panama Express Strike Force is comprised of agents and officers from the Coast Guard Investigative Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, and Homeland Security Investigations.  

My Crime Fiction: 'Nick The Broker'

Nick the Broker is chapter 4 of a crime novel I’m working on. 

The story appeared originally in American Crime Magazine. 

You can read the first three chapters via the links at the end of the story. 

Nick the Broker 

By Paul Davis 

Over a second cup of coffee in the kitchen of his grandmother’s South Philadelphia rowhouse, former Cosa Nostra capo and government cooperating witness Salvatore “Salvie Shotgun” Stillitano launched into telling me stories about his life and his late father's life. 

As a writer, I found his stories to be interesting, and my tape recorder was running to capture them. He spoke in a fast clip with a dramatic flair as he told me about his great-grandfather and namesake, Salvatore Stillitano, his grandfather Lorenzo and his father Nunzio.  

While living and traveling with his late father as a teenager, Nick Stillitano regaled his son with stories of their Cosa Nostra tradition of crime.      

According to his father, the elder Salvatore was a “Man of Honor” and boss in the Fortuna clan in the Province of Palermo in Sicily. Life was good for Stillitano and the clan, but the old mafioso was wise enough to know that America was the future for Cosa Nostra, so he sent his second oldest son Lorenzo to South Philadelphia where he had cousins. His oldest son remained with him in Sicily. 

Lorenzo Stillitano grew up in South Philly and had charm and movie star good looks. He was outgoing, engaging and a good earner for the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family.

Lorenzo was a bootlegger and gambler, and with approval from the boss, Angelo Bruno, he used his Sicilian family contacts to foster overseas business. Bruno loaned Lorenzo Stillitano and his overseas connections to the Bonfiglio crime family, cementing Bruno’s relationship with Lupo Bonfiglio.  

Lorenzo’s son Nunzio, known as Nick, was born and raised in South Philadelphia. He followed Lorenzo and became a soldier in The Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family. He dressed conservatively and he was a handsome man in a quiet way with dark wavey hair. He became a gambler, a local fixer and a good earner. Nick Stillitano was good with his fists and a knife, but he was also business-like, level-headed, reserved, organized, and very smart.

Nick Stillitano was a natural leader among his young, hot-tempered and violent cohorts. Angelo Bruno, the then-boss of the Philadelphia and South Jersey crime family, respected Lorenzo and saw Nick’s qualities.  

In those early days Nick Stillitano shined as an organizer and negotiator, but he also still had a reputation of being a ruthless enforcer when he absolutely needed to be one, often using a knife, hence the early nickname “Nick Stiletto.” He later became a boxing manager and promoter and was involved in illegal gambling and numerous money-making schemes. He also used some of his former boxers to do his rough work, such as Anthony “Tony Ball-Peen” Gina.

Gina was Stillitano’s longtime number two. One might not expect that a thin, 5’5 man would be the crew’s chief enforcer, but Gina was a lean and muscular former welterweight boxer who loved to knock out bigger men.

He was called “Tony Ball-Peen” in his boxing days because he was said to hit like a ball-peen hammer, but Gina also used the real thing on a good number of people outside of the ring. 

In the late 1960s Nick Stillitano and Tony Gina went to a South Philly bar to have a couple of drinks. Stillitano frowned when he saw Rocco Stucci, a fighter he once managed and then handed him over to another manager when Angelo Bruno ordered him to do so.

Stucci, an up-and-coming heavyweight, disliked Stillitano. Stucci drank and when he was drunk, he was mean and dirty. From the bar, Stucci began to insult Stillitano, calling him a crook and a faggot. Gina walked over and tried to calm down the drunken boxer, telling him that Stillitano was a made man, but Stucci brushed off Gina, calling him a “washed-up welterweight.”

Nick Stillitano did not respond to Stucci’s insults and got up calmly to leave the bar. Stucci rushed up to Stillitano and hit him in the face with a swift and hard left jab that sent Stillitano crashing into the table and chairs. Gina pulled out a short, leather-bound metal sap and began to slap the bigger boxer across the back of his head as Stucci tried to pull up Stillitano from the floor.

When Stucci got Stillitano to his feet, he felt a pain in his stomach, as Stillitano had pulled out his stiletto knife and plunged the sharp blade into Stucci’s middle. The boxer became enraged, and he tossed Stillitano across the room, all the while receiving numerous blows on his head from Gina’s sap.

Stucci shoved off the men who tried to restrain him and he threw a wild swing at Gina, who slipped the punch and stepped back. Finally, Stucci collapsed to the floor. The owner of the bar rushed Stillitano and Gina into the bar’s kitchen and out the back door before the police and an ambulance arrived.   

 

Angelo Bruno was not happy. Although he respected Nick Stillitano and he admired his late father Lorenzo, Stucci was a mob fighter, and he had made the wiseguys in Philadelphia and New York a lot of money. He called in Stillitano and Gina for a "sitdown" meeting.  

Stillitano and Gina reported to a small bar after it was closed. Bruno sat alone at a table. Bruno motioned for Stillitano and Gina to sit across from him. He said he had heard about the bar altercation from others who were there that night.

“This is not like you, Nick,” Bruno said, shaking his head sadly.

Stillitano apologized and said he was afraid the drunken boxer was going to beat him to death. 

Bruno said that they had Stucci in a private room at a hospital in New Jersey and they put out the story that that the fighter had been hit by a car. The fight he was scheduled for that month had to be postponed.

As for Nick, Bruno said he had to get out of South Philly as reporters and the local cops were asking questions.

Bruno said he arranged for Stillitano to be taken in by Bruno’s capo of the crew in Wildwood, New Jersey. He informed Stillitano that while he operated from the New Jersey shore resort town, he would still report directly to Bruno. And he would continue to promote fights for Bruno and Luigi “Lupo” Bonfiglio, the boss of the Bonfiglio Cosa Nostra organized crime family in New York, and Bruno’s friend on the commission.

The two mob bosses wanted Stillitano to continue to promote boxing matches and arrange crooked fights up and down the east coast, as well as out west. Stillitano was told to give the Wildwood capo a small taste of the profits.    

“Take Tony with you to Wildwood,” Bruno said.

Stillitano and Gina, pleased not to have been “whacked,” thanked the boss.

As Stillitano and Gina were leaving the bar, Bruno told the two men that the Wildwood crew had a problem, and he wanted them to handle it.  

“Washed up welterweight, am I?” Gina said to Stillitano as they stepped into the street. “I knocked out that big heavyweight bum, didn’t I?” 

Stucci later died from his bar fight injuries.      

 

Late that week, Stillitano and Gina drove to Wildwood and met with the capo, “Johnny Rose,” Rosetti, who was known locally as “Johnny Gavone” as he was a huge fat man, and he ate and dressed like a slob.

Rosetti welcomed Stillitano, as he knew his father and he heard that he was a big earner. But some in his Wildwood crew were resentful. Mob associates in the crew like Thomas “Tommy Tomatoes” Biondo disliked the two South Philly mobsters. Called “Tomatoes” due to his father owning a large tomato farm, he complained about the newcomers to his fellow mob associates.

The problem Bruno spoke of was the first order of business.

Rosetti instructed Stillitano and Gina to take care of Roman Santini, a former associate of Rosetti’s who was on a robbery spree and was knocking over dice and card games run by the Rosetti crew as well as games run by New York mobsters.

Santini, a slim, rat-faced 30-year-old, was a violent killer and a fearless and crazy gunman who killed a New York made guy in one of his robberies. The New Yorkers told Rosetti to take care of “business,” or they would come in and kill Santini themselves.

This was a great loss of face for Rosetti, whose men could not, or would not, take out the killer.

Stillitano and Gina quickly met with a former pal of Romeo Santini and asked the hood to pass on an offer. Stillitano told the friend to tell Santini that he would give the killer an all-expenses paid vacation to Sicily. Stillitano would then set Santini up in Sicily and he would become a Sicilian boss.

Santini’s greed and ego made him accept the offer. Stillitano and Gina flew to Las Vegas, where Santini was living it up with a beautiful blonde and gambling away the money he robbed.

Stillitano and Gina met Santini in a hotel room on the Strip. Santini said he liked the deal and would move to Sicily. Gina got up and said he had to go to the bathroom to take a piss. As Santini was refilling their glasses, Gina came up behind Santini and threw piano wire around the killer's neck. As Santini was being strangled brutally, Stillitano stepped in and stabbed Santini in the heart.

Stillitano then called the telephone number he had been given and asked that someone come get the body and dispose of it.

The murder gained Stillitano and Gina a lot of respect in Philadelphia and New York.

But the local Wildwood crew, who loved Santini, were angry with the two South Philly mobsters.

Stillitano later returned to South Philly and told Bruno that the Santini pal told him that Santini was doing the bidding of Carmine “Big Carmine” Polina, the boss of the New York Gambone Cosa Nostra crime family, and a crime commission member. Known derisively as “The Face” for his large head, nose and ears, the greedy and violent New York boss coveted Bruno’s gambling operations in New Jersey. He was using Santini to cause dissention in the crime families. 

 Bruno told Stillitano to keep the news under his hat.

 

New Jersey is the only state in America that has several different Cosa Nostra families operating there. There were the five New York families, the DeCavalcante New Jersey crime family, and the Philadelphia crime family.  

Due to his diplomatic and business qualities, Bruno made Stillitano the capo of the Wildwood crew when Rosetti died of natural causes. Prior to Stillitano taking over, the crew members under Rosetti had numerous territorial disputes with the New York crime families. Bruno ordered Stillitano to resolve the disputes. 

Stillitano met with the New York and DeCavalcante capos and worked out deals that satisfied everyone, even Carmine Polino, although “The Face” secretly planned to outsmart Stillitano and take over Bruno’s New Jersey operations.

Due to Stillitano’s skills, Bruno, who was a member of the national crime commission, often used Stillitano as a Commission representative with foreign crime organizations, government officials and businessmen. In addition to his boxing matches, “Nick the Broker” Stillitano also organized gambling junkets overseas and looked after Bruno’s overseas interests, as well as those of Lupo Bonfiglio and the other New York members of the national commission.

Stillitano was Bruno's representative of the Philadelphia and New York families’ interests in Las Vegas, the Caribbean, London, Italy, and other places around the world. Those interests included illegal gambling, extortion and murder.

All was well for Nick Stillitano until Angelo Bruno ordered him to travel to Palmero, Sicily and broker a deal between waring Sicilian Cosa Nostra clans over drug trafficking.

© 2025 Paul Davis 

Note: You can read the first three 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'

National Vietnam War Veterans Day 2025

As we celebrate National Vietnam Veterans Day again today, I’m thinking of my late, older brother Eddie Davis (seen in the below photo). He served as a soldier in Chu Lai, South Vietnam in 1968-1969.

I had a modest role in the conflict, having served as a teenage sailor on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk (see the below photos) on “Yankee Station” off the coast of North Vietnam in 1970-1971.  

The Vietnam War was and is misunderstood and has been politized deeply. And returning veterans were often blamed and defamed for the policy errors made by the leaders of both political parties. 

Like most of the combat pilots I spoke to on the aircraft carrier, as well as many veterans, I believe we should have gone all out and won the war instead of fighting a protracted war of attrition featured nightly on the TV news.

You can read my Counterterrorism magazine piece on the Vietnam War via the link below: 

Paul Davis On Crime: My Piece On The Vietnam War And The Lessons Learned For Iraq, Afghanistan And The War On Terrorism

You can also read my post on the aircraft carrier at war (with good photos) via the link below:  

Paul Davis On Crime: On Yankee Station: A Look Back At The Aircraft Carrier USS Kitty Hawk During The Vietnam War, 1970-1971 

And lastly, you can also read On Yankee Station, a chapter of a novel I hope to soon publish.

Paul Davis On Crime: Chapter 12: On Yankee Station 

Two Of The Best Crime Short Stories Ever Written: My Washington Times On Crime Column On A Fine Collection of Hemingway’s Novels. Short Stories and Letters

The Washington Times ran my On Crime column on a collection of Ernest Hemingway’s novels, short stories and letters.

 

You can read the column via the link below or the text below:

A fine collection of Hemingway's novels, short stories and letters - Washington Times

 

 I’ve been an Ernest Hemingway aficionado since my teens, so I was pleased to read the Library of America’s collection of the late, great writer’s stories, “Hemingway: A Farewell To Arms & Other Writings 1927-1932.”

 

The Library of America, a nonprofit organization, champions our nation’s cultural heritage by publishing America’s greatest writing in new editions. “No twentieth-century writer had a greater influence on American fiction than Ernest Hemingway,” The Library of America writes. “This volume, the second in Library of America’s definitive edition of Hemingway’s works, brings together Men Without Women, A Farewell to Arms, and Death in the Afternoon, the three books that followed his groundbreaking debut novel, ’The Sun Also Rises,’ and solidified his status as a preeminent literary modernist.

 

“The appearance of “Men Without Women” (1927) confirmed Hemingway’s determination to leave his mark on the short story form. It comprises fourteen spare and unsparing stories about wounded soldiers, boxers, and bullfighters, each displaying the extraordinary economy of language that is the hallmark of his prose.”

 

While Hemingway is mostly known for writing about war, bullfighting, hunting and fishing, he also wrote what I believe are two of the best crime short stories ever written, “The Killers” and “Fifty Grand.” Both short stories, which are about boxers and crooks, are included in this collection.

 

The killers in “The Killers” are mob hit men who show up at a diner late one night where Hemingway’s autobiographical character, young Nick Adams, is working. He overhears the two hoodlums discussing their plans to murder the boxer.

Some years ago, I read “Ellery Queen’s Book of Mystery Stories.” The crime stories in this collection were written by writers who were not generally recognized as crime, mystery, or thriller writers.

Edited by Ellery Queen, the pseudonym of the writing team of Frederic Dannay and James Yaffe, and the name of their fictional detective character, the book offered crime stories by Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and a dozen other writers. Ernest Hemingway’s “The Killers” is also included in the collection.

 

“Ernest Hemingway’s “The Killers” is one of the best-known short stories ever written, and no volume dedicated to the literature of crime would be complete without it,” the editors wrote in the introduction to the story. “It is revealing nothing new about Hemingway to point out that essentially, he is preoccupied with doom - more specifically, with death. It has been explained this way: ‘The I in Hemingway’s stories is the man that things are done to’ - and the final thing that is done to him, as to all of us, is death. No story of Hemingway illustrates this fundamental thesis more clearly than ’The Killers,’ nor does any story of Hemingway illustrate more clearly why he is a legend in his own lifetime. Here, in a few pages, is the justly famous Hemingway dialogue - terse, clipped, the quintessence of realistic speech; here in a few pages, are more than the foreshadowing of the great literary qualities to be found in ’A Farewell to Arms” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls.’”

 

In “Fifty Grand,” Hemingway’s story is about Jack Brennan, an over-the-hill fighter. Jack Brennan is visited at his training camp by two flashy men described as “wise guy” pool hall owners. The men, Steinfelt and Morgan, called “big operators,” want the boxer to throw the fight as they have big money on his opponent. Jack Brennan, who thinks he will lose the fight anyway, bets 50 grand on his opponent to win. 


Hemingway, a noted amateur boxer, was a huge boxing fan. He knew the sport and the parasitic crooks who clung to the fighters like remoras to sharks.

 

A good companion to the Library of America’s Hemingway book is the Cambridge University Press’s “The Letters of Ernest Hemingway 1934-1936.”

 

In her introduction to the volume, Dr. Verna Kale, associate editor of the Hemingway Letters Project, wrote, “The Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 6 (1934–1936) is a book about fish. It is about other things as well, of course: writing and art, friendship and fatherhood, the ongoing Great Depression and the rising threat of fascism in Europe. And fish — so many fish.”

 

The Hemingway letters cover the publication of Hemingway’s experimental nonfiction book “Green Hills of Africa” and his work on short stories, his twenty-plus pieces in Esquire magazine and his view of other writers.

 

Paul Davis’ On Crime column covers true crime, crime fiction and thrillers.

Hemingway: A Farewell To Arms & Other writings. 1927-1932
Edited by Robert W. Trogdon
Library of America, $32, 1037 pages

The Letters of Ernest Hemingway 1934-1936
Edited by Sandra Spanier, Verna Kale and Miriam B. Mandal
Cambridge University Press, $45, 700 pages

Let Good Cops Be Cops: FBI Director Patel’s Remarks At Virginia Homeland Security Task Force Press Conference

The FBI released FBI Director Kash Patel’s remarks at the press conference after the FBI and other law enforcement officers took down an illegal alien who is reportedly the number 3 leader in the brutal gang MS-13:

This is what happens when you let good cops be cops. And we’re going to continue to let good cops be cops across this country.  

President Trump gave us the executive decision to go after and safeguard our communities. General Bondi (seen in the above Justice Department photo with Patel) is our warrior of justice leading that charge. Governor Youngkin, it’s an honor to be a partner in this operation with you and U.S. Attorney Siebert. 

This is the mandate we have. Right now, we have an American dying every seven minutes from a drug overdose. That is a national security crisis we have not seen ever before. We have a woman or child being raped every six and a half minutes in this country. We have a homicide twice an hour. No part of that metric is a safe and secure America.  

But thanks to the brave leadership of this administration and the folks that you see here, we are returning our communities to safety.  

As you heard, we took down this morning a top leader of MS-13. That is not done easily. That is done with brilliant law enforcement. And right here, I’m proud—and I think the governor knows I’m biased, having graduated from the University of Richmond—to have this here in the state of Virginia, here at our Northern Virginia Resident Agency, with our partnership with our Washington Field Office and our special agents, our SOS folks, our intel analysts, and our support staff. 

My priority has been law enforcement across the country, and that will not change. But law enforcement across the country cannot be done just by Washington, D.C., and the federal government alone.  

This task force was stood up one month ago. In one month, the brave men and women on this task force from state, local, and federal authorities have arrested 342 criminals in the state of Virginia alone. 

We wanted this to be a successful model. It is a successful model because of you—because of your men and women on the streets. We have the easy job in Washington, D.C. You take it to the max every single day. You put your safety on the line. You put your selfless desires ahead of going home and seeing your families at night because you care more about safeguarding our schools and our community than you do about your own safety. So we will always have the backs of good cops because you have the backs of the American people.  

And this task force is going to go everywhere it is needed across the United States to bring the form of justice and measured security and safety that our American citizens deserve. It is an America First model because we live in the United States of America. And if you are here illegally, you will not be here any longer. And if you are going to continue to commit acts of violent crime, you will meet the same fate that this individual did this morning. 

And I just want to reiterate what our partners said behind us. This is not possible without the folks that do the job every single day. And as Director of the FBI, it’s a privilege to lead some of these brave men and women. 

And the only ask that I have of you in the community is the next time you see a cop, thank them. The next time you see someone safeguarding our schools, shake their hand. The next time you see our brave men and women of the FBI and the local and federal and state police take down a violent terrorist, maybe give them a hug. 

Because those guys—those gals—are the ones that are going to continue to keep our cities safe. And we will not stop until this national security crisis is recognized, brought into check, and eliminated.  

Thank you. 

My Crime Fiction: 'Salvie Shotgun'

Salvie Shotgun is Chapter 3 of a crime novel that I’m working on. 

The story appeared originally in American Crime Magazine.

You can read chapters 1, 2 and 4 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: 'Nick The Broker'

Salvie Shotgun

By Paul Davis

Salvatore Stillitano’s lawyer reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in meeting and interviewing the former Philadelphia Cosa Nostra caporegime. 

I said yes. 

As a newspaper crime reporter and columnist, I’d covered organized crime for many years. As a kid growing up in South Philly in the 1960s, I was aware of the Cosa Nostra culture early on. I lived around the corner from Angelo Bruno, the then-boss of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family. 

I had childhood friends who went from being street corner hoodlums to being mob guys. In the 1960s, when I was a teenager, I hung on the street corners with them, and I went to school with them. In the 1970s, when I was in my 20s, I hung out with them in South Philly’s mob-owned bars and nightclubs. And as a writer, I’ve interviewed a good number of them since those early days. 

Although Salvatore Stillitano and I were roughly the same age and we were two old school South Philly street guys, I had never met him. I knew about him as far back as the 1980s, when he made newspaper headlines and was the lead TV news story due to his becoming a cooperating government witness. 

In the press at the time, Salvatore “Salvie Shotgun” Stillitano was called a “Mafia Prince,” as he was a fourth-generation member of Cosa Nostra, his lineage reaching way back to Sicily. He violated his Cosa Nostra vow of Omerta by testifying in federal court against his one-time criminal partners, bosses and underlings. He helped put away several top mobsters from South Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York.  

After serving a brief sentence in a federal prison, Stillitano was placed in the federal witness protection system in the mid-1980s. He, his wife and his infant daughter were shipped off somewhere out west. Back home in Philadelphia, the mob had put out a $200,000 contract on his life. 

So, I was surprised that the lawyer invited me to go to Stillitano’s late grandmother’s home in South Philadelphia and meet him. 

I ventured to the small rowhouse in South Philadelphia to meet Salvatore Stillitano, the famous – or infamous - former Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family caporegime-turned cooperating government witness. 

Stillitano answered the door and shook my hand. He was gray-haired, tall and muscular with a slight beer-belly. He was wearing a blue tracksuit with white sneakers. What stood out immediately to me was that although he lacked his late father’s classical good looks, he had his father’s large, protruding, cold black eyes. 

After we sat down at his late grandmother’s kitchen table and Stillitano poured us both a cup of coffee. I smelled the delectable aroma of a pot of old-fashioned “gravy,” as Italian Americans called red sauce in South Philly. 

I complemented him on the gravy’s smell, and he offered me a plate of rigatoni and meatballs, but I declined, wanting to get on with the initial interview. 

I asked him if he was concerned about being murdered by one of his former criminal associates. 

“Nah,” he replied. “Who’s around from my day that’s willing to try. There’s no money in it anymore.” 

Stillitano told me he wanted me to write his life story. As I was half-Italian on my late mother’s side, and I was born and raised in South Philadelphia, he thought that I would understand his life better than most writers. 

He said that he read my column in the local paper about my meeting his late father in 1975 in Sicily, and he read my interviews with other former Cosa Nostra figures, including former Philadelphia Cosa Nostra boss Ralph Natale, former Philadelphia Cosa Nostra underboss Philip Leonetti, and former New York Cosa Nostra Columbo captain Michael Franzese. 

I told him that I would like to tell his story first in a series of my columns in the local paper, and later compiling the columns into a book. 

“Sounds good,” he said.     

He told me that he had been given an oral history of Cosa Nostra while living and working with his late father over the years. Thankfully for me and for my readers, he had a fine memory. 

Stillitano told me that his namesake great-grandfather back in Sicily was “in the tradition,” as he referred to Cosa Nostra just as his father had when I spoke to him in Sicily. His grandfather, Lorenzo Stillitano, left Sicily and came to South Philadelphia as a young boy. He was later inducted into the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family. His father, Nunzio Stillitano, once known as “Nick Stiletto,” and later known as “Nick the Broker,” was born and raised in South Philadelphia. Like his father Lorenzo, he too became a Cosa Nostra member in the Philadelphia crime family. 

Salvatore Stillitano said he wanted to tell his story and his father’s story, as he believed the tale had great historical importance. He also lamented the decline of his tradition, and he no longer felt any loyalty to Cosa Nostra. 

I took out my pen and notebook and my tape recorder and placed them on the kitchen table.   

“I was raised in the tradition,” Stillitano said. “Although my father never spoke publicly about our tradition, he had for many years schooled me about his history in Cosa Nostra with the notion that I would in turn tell my future son when his grandson became the fifth generation to become a member of the Cosa Nostra.”   

His father called him Salvatore, named after his Sicilian great-grandfather, but the young guys in South Philly called him “Salvie Shotgun.” 

“Not because of my use of the weapon,” Stillitano said with a smile. “I was called “Salvie Shotgun” back in the day because of my threat to use one. I’ll put a shotgun up his ass, was how I’d respond to a threat or an insult.” 

But years later, he confessed, he would in fact use a shotgun to commit a murder and become a “made man” in the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra organized crime family. And he admitted to using a shotgun several other times in his criminal career. 

He said he was raised principally by his grandmother in the 1950s and the 1960s in South Philadelphia after his mother died when he was a toddler. As a teenager, he spent summers and holidays with his father in Wildwood, New Jersey, where his Cosa Nostra education began. His father wanted his son to go to college and become a legitimate professional of some sort, but his son hated school, and he wanted to join the family tradition. His father relented and then began to train his son. He eventually sponsored him as a member of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family.     

Salvatore Stillitano rose from a soldier under his father to replacing him as the caporegime, or captain, of the Philadelphia crime family’s crew in Wildwood, New Jersey. 

Stillitano told me he was a faithful Cosa Nostra member for many years until the day the FBI came to him and played a wiretapped recording of two older men and former partners of his late father’s. The tape revealed that the two men were planning his murder. 

“I grew up around these old bastards,” Stillitano said. “They were both close to my father, and I thought of them as my uncles. I couldn’t believe these greedy, evil old men wanted me dead.” 

After the FBI special agent left him, Stillitano grabbed his hidden money and moved his wife and baby daughter back to South Philadelphia, where he turned himself into the FBI. For the promise of protection for him and his family, and a reduced sentence for his admitted crimes, he agreed to become a cooperating witness against the two older Cosa Nostra members. 

Over the course of many taped interviews, Stillitano told me his story and his father’s story of their tradition of crime.

© 2025 Paul Davis  

Note: You can read my crime fiction stories via the link below:  

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction Stories

Springtime For Armed Robbers

Broad & Liberty ran my piece on armed robbery.

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Paul Davis: Springtime for armed robbers

Spring is here, and this is a fine time to go to parks, to stroll along district shopping avenues, or to simply go for walks in your neighborhood, as the weather is mild and comfortable. 

But be warned that this time of year is also springtime for armed robbers. While you are out and about enjoying the spring air and sunshine, armed predator criminals are also on the street looking for an easy victim. 

I know a man who told me he had been a victim of armed robbery as he walked on a street in a low-crime neighborhood in South Philadelphia. 

He recounted how he went out for a walk in his neighborhood during the early evening on a fine spring night. As he walked along the street, two young thugs emerged from a car and confronted him. One of the thugs stuck a gun in his face. Even though he willingly handed over his wallet and watch, the street thug brutally pistol-whipped him. A neighbor came out of her house upon hearing the commotion and she called 911. The man was rushed to the hospital where he was treated for multiple injuries. 

The man told me that he no longer goes out at night. 

Armed robbery is defined as the unlawful taking of property from someone by use of the threat of violence using a weapon. It is one of the most dangerous crimes, as it involves firearms or some other deadly weapon.

For the criminal, armed robbery is a quick and relatively easy way to obtain money. Many armed robbers are addicted to drugs and alcohol, and they need the money for their chemical dependency. The fact that the armed robber is probably intoxicated with impaired judgment makes for a potential deadly incident. Lately, it appears that many armed robbers are juvenile thugs looking for a thrill and “street cred.” 

Teenagers, women, the elderly, the handicapped, and lone men walking at night seem to be the profile that armed robbers prefer. But anyone can become a victim.   

Over my many years of covering crime, I’ve witnessed the look of shock, humiliation and fear on the faces of armed robbery victims while I was out on my many ride-alongs with the cops. I’ve also witnessed scared and battered armed robbery victims in police stations when they were brought in for statements and to possibly identify the thugs from mugshots. For many armed robbery victims, this traumatic experience will haunt them for the rest of their lives.     

While an armed robbery can happen anytime on the street where you live, shop or work, police and security experts have told me over the years that there are some commonsense precautions one can take to prevent becoming a victim.  

Be aware of your surroundings. Walk purposely with your head up.

Don’t walk while looking at your cell phone. 

Stay in lighted areas at night.  

Walk in crowded areas, as there is safety in numbers.

Women should carry their wallet in their pocket, not their purse. 

Don’t wear flashy jewelry.

Be aware of people around you when using an ATM card. Try to use an ATM that is located inside a business.

If while walking, you see that a car is following you, cross the street and turn back towards your home.

Don’t take shortcuts through isolated areas.

Keep cell phones and other valuables concealed and hidden.

Try to remember the armed robbers’ description, so you can pass it on to the police. 

Never resist, as armed robbers can become violent and cause you great harm and possibly murder you. 

This is good advice for most, but as I’m military trained and experienced, and I have a license to carry a firearm, I refuse to be a victim. But this is a very personal choice that not everyone should choose to take. 

If one does plan to carry a legal firearm, they should consider getting properly trained.

So, enjoy the marvelous spring weather and go out for walks, but always be on the lookout for armed robbers who will positively ruin your day.    

Paul Davis, a Philadelphia writer and frequent contributor to Broad + Liberty, also contributes to Counterterrorism magazine and writes the “On Crime” column for the Washington Times. He can be reached at pauldavisoncrime.com.