Phila. mobster sentenced in racketeering case

Philadelphia mob associate and admitted murderer Roger Vella was sentenced to 140 months in prison yesterday on a racketeering-conspiracy charge that included allegations he played a minor role in two gangland killings.

The long-awaited sentencing - Vella pleaded guilty to the charge in January 2004 and has been cooperating with authorities for more than seven years - came amid reports that he recently testified before a federal grand jury in Philadelphia in an organized-crime racketeering investigation.

Reputed mob boss Joseph Ligambi and several of his top associates, including jailed mobsters George Borgesi and Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino, are believed to be targets of that probe.

In brief comments before U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell, Vella, 37, said he remained willing to testify for the government.

"He's morally committed," Vella's lawyer, Nicholas Nastasi, said after the court proceeding.

"If something comes down the road, he will do that," Nastasi said when asked whether his client would appear on the witness stand against his former mob colleagues.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Labor described Vella's cooperation to date as "remarkable" but declined to provide details. A government motion arguing for a downward departure in the sentencing guidelines in Vella's case was filed under seal.

Vella could have been sentenced to 30 years to life. Instead, Dalzell imposed a sentence of slightly less than 12 years that will run concurrently with a sentence Vella is already serving in a third-degree homicide case.

Vella has served eight years of an 11- to 23-year sentence after pleading guilty in Common Pleas Court to the 1995 murder of South Philadelphia drug dealer Ralph Mazzuca.

Nastasi said Vella could be released from prison in about four years.

Neither Nastasi nor Labor would comment further about Vella's cooperation.

Vella, a former South Philadelphia corner boy who also has a prior conviction for drug dealing, was a close associate of both Merlino and Borgesi, two high-ranking members of the Philadelphia mob.

Borgesi was questioned, but never charged, in the Mazzuca murder.

Mazzuca was shot multiple times before his body was dumped and set on fire near the South Philadelphia food-distribution center.

Vella was arrested for that slaying in October 2000 and pleaded guilty shortly after he began cooperating about a year later. He has linked both Borgesi and Merlino to the murder, according to FBI documents.

Vella subsequently pleaded guilty to a racketeering-conspiracy charge that was the subject of yesterday's sentencing. That charge was built primarily around information Vella provided after he began talking.

It included Vella's admissions to aiding and abetting in two murders and taking part in extortions and witness tampering for the mob.

According to FBI documents and sources familiar with the investigation, Vella has said that he helped obtain a gun and a car used in the murder of William Veasey in 1995, and that he provided information about mobster Ron Turchi's daily routine in the days before Turchi was killed in 1999.

Veasey was gunned down as he was leaving for work on the morning that his brother, mob cooperator John Veasey, was about to take the stand at a racketeering trial.

Turchi was shot and his body left in the trunk of his car parked on a South Philadelphia street.

Authorities have tried to link both homicides to the Ligambi-Merlino faction of the mob.

No one has ever been charged in the Turchi hit.

Merlino, Borgesi and John Ciancaglini were charged with the Veasey murder in a 2001 racketeering case, but were found not guilty.

All three were convicted of other offenses.

Ciancaglini was recently released after serving nearly eight years. Merlino and Borgesi are still serving 14-year sentences.

Borgesi, who is Ligambi's nephew, has also surfaced as an unindicted coconspirator in a gambling and racketeering case developed by the Pennsylvania State Police and the state Attorney General's Office in Delaware County.

Sources have said that some of the information and evidence from that case could be folded into the ongoing federal racketeering investigation in which Vella is apparently also supplying information.

Vella has testified for the government in a minor drug case, but has yet to take the stand against any of his former associates.

If and when he does, his credibility is expected to be challenged. Among other things, FBI memos indicate that while being debriefed, Vella fabricated a story about how he had become a "made," or formally initiated, member of the crime family.

He later recanted that statement, admitting that he had lied.

"He's a legend in his own mind," Ligambi's lawyer, Mike Pinsky, said at the time.