Casino panel gets dark portrait of mob family life

ATLANTIC CITY - It was Married to the Mob without the humor, a dark, soap-operaesque story that offered a rare look inside a woman's relationship with a notorious organized-crime figure.

There was mental and physical abuse - beatings, black eyes, and threats of gun violence, including a forced game of Russian roulette.

There were financial problems - for years after their breakup there was no child support, and she struggled on her own to raise their five children.

And there was - and, most important from her perspective, still is - guilt by association, a mob-connected label that haunts her, her children, and, she worries, perhaps even her grandchildren.

That's the personal portrait Phyllis Merlino, 60, painted yesterday as she testified before a Casino Control Commission hearing examiner considering whether she, her son, and their construction company should be licensed to work on casino projects.

Twice, first in 1987 and again in 1996, Bayshore Rebar Inc. of Pleasantville has been denied a license because of suspected mob associations.

Whether those ties exist is at the heart of the current licensing hearing, which is expected to continue at least two more weeks.

For three hours yesterday, Phyllis Merlino answered questions, first from her lawyer and then from Assistant Attorney General Anthony J. Zarrillo of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.

Though the focus was on potential mob ties, the story itself was part Oprah, part Jerry Springer.

"I was married at 16, had five children by the time I was 22, and was separated by the time I was 23," Phyllis Merlino said of her relationship with the late Lawrence "Yogi" Merlino, a mob capo who died in 2001.

The Merlinos divorced in 1977.

"He was abusive," she told her attorney, John Donnelly, as he led her through her story. "He gave me a black eye."

Asked whether her husband had ever threatened her with a gun, she paused, then, biting her lip, said, "he forced me to play Russian roulette."

When she left her husband, she said, she took her five children, all under age 7. There were her oldest son and current business partner, Joseph N., now 43; daughter Kimberly, 42; son Nicholas, 40; and twins Marco and Monique, 38.

Four of her five children were at yesterday's hearing.

Phyllis Merlino testified that she raised her children on her own, often struggling to pay bills, sometimes staying in a house without electricity, and seldom receiving any help from her former husband, who by the early 1980s was an up-and-comer in a mob family dominated by Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, one of the most violent mob bosses in Philadelphia history.

Phyllis Merlino said she knew very little "about that nonsense" and was not fully aware of her ex-husband's role in the mob until he agreed to pay the mortgage on a house in Margate where she moved with her five children in 1982.

"When I got married, he was a butcher and his brother was a bartender," she said.

She said that over the years she had little to do with her husband's "side of the family."

She described a rocky relationship with her former sister-in-law, Rita, wife of mobster Salvatore Merlino and mother of mob leader Joseph S. "Skinny Joey" Merlino.

"It was a peculiar relationship," she said. "For about five years, they didn't talk to us at all."

She said that she had known of her nephew Skinny Joey's mob ties from "reading the papers," but that until his conviction on racketeering charges in 2001 she had not been fully aware of how deeply he was involved.

"I never knew him that way," she said, explaining contacts now being cited by the Division of Gaming Enforcement, including the fact that Bayshore had offered Skinny Joey a job when he was seeking parole in 1995 and that Skinny Joey and his wife were sometimes house guests and attended parties at Phyllis Merlino's home in Ventnor in the late 1990s.

Phyllis Merlino said she and her family had decided to sever all ties with that side of the family in 2000 or 2001 because of the notoriety.

Among other things, the division has cited phone records that Phyllis Merlino supplied showing calls between Bayshore and Skinny Joey's side of the family, including calls from Skinny Joey while he was in prison awaiting trial in the 2001 racketeering case.

There also were several calls from top Merlino associate Martin Angelina, according to phone records.

Phyllis Merlino said she had become a friend of Angelina's wife, Lauren, who, she said, was going through the same kinds of problems in her marriage that she had had.

Asked whether she had ever discussed Angelina's mob activities with his wife, Phyllis Merlino said: "We never discussed what her husband did, only what he did to her."

Martin Angelina's attorney did not return a call last night seeking comment on Phyllis Merlino's testimony.

Phyllis Merlino said the last time she spoke to her former sister-in-law, Rita, was in November 2001.

By that point, Lawrence Merlino, who had been in the witness-protection program in another part of the country, had died of cancer.

Phyllis Merlino said she and her children decided to have his body brought back for burial because it was the right thing to do.

Rita Merlino, whose husband, Salvatore, is still serving a 45-year prison sentence, didn't see it that way, she said.

"Rita called me and said we were a- for burying him," Phyllis Merlino said. "I said, 'I'm not asking for your permission,' and then I hung up the phone."

She ended her testimony yesterday insisting that she, her son, and their company have had nothing to do with organized crime.

"We're like branded," she said. "Is this life without parole?"

She added that if it were up to her, they wouldn't even be in front of the Casino Control Commission.

Their company, she said, has enough work and doesn't need the license.

They are living well. They don't need the added aggravation that the hearing brings - the testimony, the rehashing of old allegations, the retelling of a family saga that sounds more and more like a soap opera as it ages.

"My son, he wants his name cleared," she said.

So she agreed to try one more time for a license, for her children and her grandchildren.

That, she said, despite the fact that when they were denied a license in 1996, she said she would never try again.

"I told my kids then, 'If Jesus Christ came down from the cross and defended us, we still wouldn't get licensed.' "