Salvatore Testa - Relationship With Father Phil

Relationship With Father Phil

Salvatore had a close relationship with his father and became involved with him in the rackets of drug trafficking, loansharking and extortion. Mob informant Nicholas Caramandi said, "Salvie was all for 'this thing'. Knew it inside out. Knew it better than guys who were sixty years old and who'd been in it for forty years. Because of his father. He'd been a good teacher. Salvie had nerve and he didn't care who he killed. Sometimes we used to go and we'd come back and tell him, "Well, the kids were in the car, the family's in the car.' "I don't care who's in the car', he'd say. 'Everybody goes.' That's the kind of guy he was. One Thanksgiving Day he wanted use to go into Sonny Riccobene's house where Robert Riccobene was havin' dinner with his family. 'Shoot everybody in the house'. But he and Charlie and Faffy made up some story that he didn't show up. Just to appease Salvie. 'Cause we didn't go for killing kids. It was something we drew a line with, but he (Testa) was just so full of venom that he didn't care. He was a guy made for 'this thing.' He loved it. He lived it. And he was very bitter about what happened to his father (Philip), about the way his father got killed, blown up with nails in him." Despite the close relationship with his father, Salvatore sister's Maria would later tell the Philadelphia Inquirer that it was she, and not Salvatore that made the funeral arrangements for their father after he was murdered, as she had with their mother Alfia and later, her brother in 1984.