Joey Merlino Would Like to Get Some Things Off His Chest

Joey Merlino / Photograph by Kyle Kielinski

In and out of prison and courtrooms for much of his life, accused — and acquitted — of multiple murders, and survivor of numerous assassination plots, “Skinny” Joey Merlino is now 63 and says his wildest days are behind him. But not his most successful ones. He insists that those are still to come, via his new cheesesteak biz — and that The Godfather and Goodfellas got it wrong. All wrong.

Now that the niceties are done, I have to address the major elephant in the room. My watch guy tells me that the timepiece you’re sporting in this photo is an Audemars Piguet valued at $150,000. “Well,” he told me, “assuming it’s real.” I laughed at him and said, “I’ll leave it for you to question Joey fucking Merlino on the authenticity of his watch.” I can give you his name later, if you’d like. (Okay, it’s Philly restaurant publicist Peter Breslow.)
[Laughs] Tell Peter he has a good eye. I don’t wear nothin’ fake. The only other thing I wear is my red string bracelet, for good luck.

Joey Merlino with jailmate “Cocho” at USP Marion in 2008 / Photograph courtesy of Joey Merlino

Ugh! That sucks. Now, before we get into the nitty-gritty, I’d like to touch on the conditions you requested when I first approached you about doing this interview. You wanted written questions in advance. I said no. Then you said you would do it so long as I didn’t ask any “trick questions.” Are we talking What word is spelled incorrectly in every single dictionary?
[Laughs; brief pause]

The answer, of course, is incorrectly.
[Laughs] That’s a good one! No, what I meant was that I didn’t want to talk about my past. This is about my future.

Without your past, there would be no future.
Yeah. So, you can talk about my trials. But you have to remember that me and my friends beat everything. Yeah, they had a million “witnesses” over the years saying all of these things. A bunch of lying fucking rats. But the juries didn’t believe one word these guys said about me. Of course, the press never writes about the acquittals in the way they write about the arrests. Did I gamble? Sure. And I went to jail for that. But everybody gambles. And when you can make these charges as part of a RICO case, it becomes a big deal. And a lot of people are now starting to understand RICO better.

Joey Merlino outside his Boca Raton home in 2018 while on house arrest

How so?
Look at what they fucking did to Trump! They hit him with a RICO case. [Laughs] It’s fucking ridiculous. I was just talking to this guy who had been charged with murder and taking bets. It was a RICO case. Found not guilty of murder. Guilty of taking bets. The judge sentenced him to 30 years! Because it’s somehow under RICO. You want to tell me how that is fucking justifiable? In one of my cases, I pleaded guilty to placing a bet. Not bookmaking. And the fucking prick judge gives me two years in prison! And I lost the fucking bet!

What was it?
I bet on the Patriots.

Please tell me it wasn’t against the Eagles, or you and I may have a problem.
Listen, I love Tom Brady, but it wasn’t against the Eagles. I actually can’t remember who they were playing. But I lost the fucking bet that landed me in prison.

You live in Boca Raton, but you’re back in South Philly a lot. And your new cheese­steak shop, Skinny Joey’s, is close to where you grew up, in Packer Park. What are the biggest changes that you see in the neighborhood?
You really could leave your door open when we were kids. Now, you need a fucking machine gun just to protect yourself. In my days, we were in the streets all the time playing hockey, football, stickball, halfball. Life was good. On Halloween, we threw eggs at all the houses.

Now, you can’t even throw eggs — especially not at 700 bucks per dozen! But these days, the kids don’t go out. They sit the fuck inside. That’s why they are all fat. These young kids today are fucked up. Victor, when you were a kid, did you ever hear of a school shooting? Of course not. When I was a kid, the nuns would beat the shit out of us in school. My mother beat me up every day. Today, you can’t hit a kid. God forbid.

So corporal punishment would reduce school shootings?
Those beatings sure taught me a lesson! [Laughs]

What other lessons did you learn from your parents? I should note for readers that your father was mobster Salvatore “Chuckie” Merlino.
Yeah. They taught me a lot. Mostly, don’t be a tattletale. And what I learned later in life is that there are so many tattle­tales who are actually lying about you. What happens then? You go to prison! That’s the sad fucking part.

Father Salvatore Merlino (left), Nicky Scarfo, and Louie Matteo at a police station in 1963. / Photograph courtesy of the Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries

I’m guessing you weren’t a model student.
[Laughs] Nah. I was bad, got into trouble every day. The nuns liked to lock me in the basement. One time, Sister Josephine Dolores­ forgot about me. My mom thought I was missing. No one realized where I was until just before midnight. I was still locked down there! They were the good ol’ days. These days, parents would fucking sue the nuns.

You clearly miss the “old” South Philly. Is it hard for you to see the transformation of the Italian Market, which has little “Italian” left in it?
When I was younger, it was all Italian. When Rocky ran down the street, everybody was Italian. There are very few Italians left on 9th Street.

But those Italian businesses that thrived on 9th were opened long ago by immigrants, and, generations later, their descendants don’t want anything to do with the businesses.
Yes. That is correct. These kids don’t want to work. The Mexicans in the Italian Market? They work. They want to work. God bless them.

Joey Merlino with his daughter at FCI Fairton in New Jersey in 1999 / Photograph courtesy of Joey Merlino

Joey, you might start sounding old if you keep going with this “kids today” rhetoric.
[Laughs] They have no work ethic. I said this 10 years ago and nobody listened to me: The phones are the ruination. I go into a nice restaurant and there’s a six-year-old kid with an iPad and fucking earphones in. The best babysitter!

This talk about childhood and the old ways makes me think of a scene from Goodfellas. Teenage Henry Hill has just become part of “the family.” And he realizes that he’s now granted a new level of respect in the neighborhood because of this. People are suddenly carrying his mother’s groceries. How real is that?
Bullshit! All those movies are bullshit. Fake. Henry Hill was an idiot. A fucking junkie. A cokehead and a crackhead.

Are you saying that all mob movies are bullshit?
Yeah. And I never watched one episode of The Sopranos. These things all make Italians look bad.

You gotta tell me that The Godfather is okay.
I never seen the third one. I heard it was awful. But, yeah, all these movies. Nothing is real. It’s all made-up Hollywood bullshit.

Joey Merlino leaving federal court in Manhattan with wife Deborah after his racketeering case mistrial in February 2018. / Photograph by Kathy Willens/AP photo

Back to real life: Prosecutors and the press have called you the head of the Philly mob at different times of your life, and —
I’m not in crime no more! Listen, I was no altar boy. I’ve gambled. I’ve received stolen goods.

I get that you went to jail for those things. But you’ve also been accused of murder and other violent crimes. There’s no statute of limitations on murder. But if, say, you broke somebody’s kneecaps 30 years ago, you could tell me that.
No! I never did no violence. I never did none of that. Never. Not me.

Okay, Joey. Well, if I were placing a $10,000 bet on whether you’ll face more criminal charges in the future, what’s the smart bet?
Oh, they hate me! They probably will bring a case against me. They hate my podcast, The Skinny With Joey Merlino, because I talk about all of the injustice. I talk about the fact that Sammy the Bull killed at least 19 people but is out on the streets. Meanwhile, you have these poor kids found with crack on them and they can’t afford lawyers so they get public defenders and decades in prison. I’m tired of people in the justice system fucking people’s lives up. So, yeah, they will probably try to get me again. They don’t care. But you know who doesn’t care more? Me! They can indict me tomorrow. I don’t give a fuck. Bring it on.

Most organized crime figures have stayed out of the spotlight, avoiding attention and press. One notorious exception was John Gotti. And then you, whom the press dubbed the John Gotti of Passyunk Avenue.
That was a compliment! John Gotti was a good man. The best!

But do you think that fast lifestyle you had, how you would regularly turn up in the papers saying whatever you wanted to say — do you think this contributed to prosecutors coming after you?
Probably. And it didn’t help that they all hated my father. My name was already dirt.

I read that you evaded 12 assassination plots.
There have been plenty. Bombs under the car. All kinds of things. All of them who tried it did a really­ bad job.

I probably should have asked you this at the start, but what’s a question that you hate when people ask you?
I don’t give a fuck. I’m an open book. If I don’t like a question, I’ll just curse you.

The maloik?!
No, I’ll just curse you. I’ll just say, “Fuck you, next question.”

Another thing it probably would have been in my best self-interest to ask you much sooner: What does someone need to do to really piss you off these days?
Be a lying fucking rat!

So you’re 63 now. You’ve got plenty of life left to live, but you’ve also lived a lot of life, a storied one at that. Biggest regret?
I have zero regrets. I do need to get back to the gym. Opening this place, I’ve been eating way too many cheese­steaks. But I could still do 25 pull-ups right this second. Okay, 20.

You brought up cheese­steaks, so it’s time to go there. I went down to Skinny Joey’s one day and it was a two-hour wait. Didn’t wait. Of course, if you weren’t behind it, that line wouldn’t exist.
Wrong! We truly have the best cheese­steak in Philly.

The line at Skinny Joey’s Cheesesteaks / Photograph by Kyle Kielinski

But that’s like barbecue in Texas. Every place claims theirs is the best.
But it’s really true at Skinny Joey’s. I’ve been eating cheesesteaks for as long as I can remember. We took it to the next level. Our roast pork is also the best. Our chicken wings are also the best.

You can’t have the best everything.
We do! And I’m going to franchise this. You watch. You’re going to wake up one day and there will be hundreds or thousands of Skinny Joey’s. Then I’m gonna sell it for a couple of billion, buy a 300-foot yacht, and never look back.

What is the second-best cheesesteak in Philly? The current viral sensation is Angelo’s. What’s your review?
I’ve never been to Angelo’s. And I’m never setting foot in Angelo’s. [At this point, Merlino goes into a long and winding and profanity-filled tirade about Angelo’s owner Danny DiGiampietro that, for the sake of length and out of legal concerns, we’ll leave between the two of them.]

Has life slowed down much from the partying, clubbing, fast-living Joey Merlino we used to know? You’re in Boca. It’s Friday. What are you doing tonight?
Tonight? I’ll go out for a steak. There aren’t any clubs in Boca. They are all in Miami. And, besides, I’m too old for that Miami club scene. After my steak dinner, I’ll probably have a cigar. I just quit smoking cigarettes, but the cigars are okay.

What prompted you to give up cigs?
I’m a fucking idiot. It’s the worst. Such a nasty habit. I’d been smoking since I was 12.

Joey Merlino on his way to the winner’s circle at Keystone Racetrack (now Philly Park at Parx Casino) with groom “Shorty” in 1981 / Photograph courtesy of Joey Merlino

Good luck sticking to it. When I mentioned to some friends that I was going to interview you, some thought you were an odd choice for this space. Though you have never been convicted of a violent crime, a lot of people believe you’ve committed violent crimes. Including murder.
Right. That’s what they believe. But was I convicted? No. Beat. It. All.

Actually, people seemed less concerned with the murder accusations and more with the fact that you are a big fan of the current president.
He’s the best president we’ve ever had.

I can understand someone thinking he’s doing a good job but … the best president ever? This is making me feel less confident in your self-assessment of your cheesesteaks, pork, and wings.
[Laughs] He is the best. He is doing everything right. And unlike Sleepy Joe Biden, he is not afraid of press conferences. And you didn’t ask me about Elon Musk, but I’ll tell you that he’s a fucking genius. Democrats loved him before. Now that he’s with Trump, they all hate him. Go figure. But, yes. Trump is the best. Ever.

I guess history will be the judge of Trump, as it will be of you.
When I die, no purgatory. Do not pass go. I’m going straight to heaven, and I hope to see you up there. We’ll smoke a cigar.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Published as “The Skinny on Skinny” in the June 2025 issue of Philadelphia magazine.