Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 2

I 2 Wednesday. February 10, 1982 Philadelphia Daily News MmEfe The Pregnant Strangers She said she she was having the baby because she was afraid of dying. She said she thought the man who made her pregnant loved her and would take care of her. She accepted their hospitality and she left them without even saying "Thank you." They never heard from the girl after that. In the last six years, the Walls have had four pregnant strangers in their house.

Three were teenagers. The first girl who came to them lived in hope that the man who made her pregnant would support the baby. He was married and all the girl had of him was a phone number where he worked. One of the teenagers had been beaten by her boyfriend when she was six months pregnant. Beating up pregnant girls apparently wasn't his only fault.

He was in residence at Holmes-burg Prison during the 2Vi months the girl lived with the Walls. They knew this because the girl told them where she was going each time she visited him. stranger. She became more like a daughter. Mrs.

Wall said her father wasn't thinking right, that he was angry but that he would get over it. She said her father would understand, finally, that she shouldn't interrupt her education. So she stayed in school while she waited out her pregnancy. Two weeks before the baby was born, she got married. She had told Mrs.

Wall that she didn't want the man to feel she was forcing him. She gave him time. She stayed with the Walls until the baby came. Mrs. Wall sat up all night with her through her labor.

At in the morning, she drove her to the hospital. This woman who came as a pregnant stranger still calls Mrs. Wall on the phone. She and her husband have two children now and her father and mother are delighted to be grandparents. Only one of the others ever called.

She's married now, too, and she kept her baby. Mrs. Wall doesn't know about the other two, about the strangers who stayed strangers. They might have put their babies up for adoption. "I worried for them," she said.

"I wanted to make everything right for them, but I realized you couldn't change their lives overnight." Mrs. Wall said she is ready to take in another pregnant girl tomorrow, no matter who she is or where she's from. The first girl who lived with them wasn't ungrateful, she said. It was just that nothing had ever happened to her in her whole life that would have made her know how to say thank you. Larry McMullen's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Marcella Wall was 56 years old the first time she took a pregnant, unmarried girl, a stranger, into her house to live until the baby was born. Her own family was raised. Only one of her eight children, a teenager then, was still at home. Mrs. Wall is a nurse.

Her husband is a teacher. They live in a six-bedroom house in Jenkin-town. They are white middle-class America and comfortable enough, but they didn't start out that way. They were coming into the years now when they could look backward to the struggles or forward to a more graceful time and see nothing but good in their lives. They didn't need a pregnant stranger to make their lives better.

This stranger was 18 years old. She was poor. Her parents didnt want her. She was a ward of the county. She was white and she was pregnant by a black man.

Her social worker went to Birthright, an organization that helps pregnant girls with doctors, with lawyers and with what are called host homes to have babies instead of abortions. Marcella Wall, who is a member of the local Pro-Life Coalition, volunteered her home to host pregnant girls who wanted to have their babies. One of the pregnant strangers was 26 years old. Like the others, she wasn't married. Unlike the others, she was studying for a master's degree in education.

She was the oldest of eight children in a family that had great respect for learning and almost none for a woman having a child before she had a husband. When her father found out she was pregnant, he told her it would be better if she lived someplace where no one knew her until the baby was born. He said it would be a good idea, too, if she stopped going to classes so she wouldn't be seen in that condition. She never considered an abortion or going against her father's wishes. "I've hurt my father enough," she told Mrs.

Wall, "without being disobedient to him now." She visited her parents at their home until she began showing. She talked with Mrs. Wall all the time. She listened to her advice. She stopped being a The first girl stayed with them five months.

She didnt say much when she was with the Walls. She ate with them, she washed the dishes, she watched television. In the summer, she sat on the porch with them and their children who came to visit. She listened to the talk, but she always seemed to be someplace else. Sometimes, she seemed in awe of them.

She had been pregnant twice. The first time, she had an abortion. She said the pain had scared her. The second time she got pregnant, she came to the Walls so she would have a place to live while she was waiting for the baby to be born. lcarib Takes a Bhoi at Sha Tp time associate of Scarfo and lately has been Monte Ciancaglini By JOE ODOWD and TOM COONEY One of Philadelphia's most prominent families is not noted for its social graces.

The family is rich beyond belief. It has been around for a fairly long time probably since before the turn of the century. Its members' names and faces frequently are seen in the newspapers. But its manners are not of the best. Unlike some of the very proper business companies it controls, it makes no announcements of changes in leadership or additions to membership.

WHEN IT LOSES a member, however, there is usually quite a bit of public attention. Some of the biggest stories about the families are obituaries, of sorts. Despite its penchant for secrecy, it's known that the family once was headed by Angelo Bruno and, after him, Philip Testa. Now, after a period of uncertainty marked by a degree of violence, the mantle apparently has settled on the shoulders of Nicodemo "Littly Nicky" Scarfo. What we have here, of course, is what law enforcement authorities call a "crime family," a part of organized crime.

The recent history of the Philadelphia family has been written in red. Not ink, but blood. Now, perhaps, peace has returned. The family according to sources in the FBI, city police and the Pennsylvania Crime Commission has taken on this look: Scarfo, 52, the undersized Atlantic City man with the oversized temper, definitely has taken control. For a while, some sources had thought Frank "Frankie Flowers" D'Al-fonso was the new leader, but any authority he might have had disappeared when he was beaten within a half-inch of his life last Oct.

29 and, most importantly, apparently did nothing to retaliate against his attackers. Salvatore "Chuckle" Merlino, 42, is the new underboss, or second in command. Merlino, of Jackson Street near 9th, is a long making several trips a week to see Scarfo, who is under court order not to leave Atlantic County. Sentenced to two years in jail for possession of a gun while on probation, he's appealing. Should he lose, as expected, and go away, hell run things from a cell, as has been done before, with Merlino in charge on the home front.

The new consigliere, or adviser, is believed to be Frank Monte, 49, long one of the most prominent members of the family and especially active in its numbers operations. One source holds out for Nicholas Piccolo in that job, but Philadelphia police say the 77-year-old Piccolo has virtually disappeared from the scene in recent The rising young star is Joseph "Chickie" Ciancaglini, 47, the burly former bodyguard for Frank Sindone. He has been an "enforcer" for years, but now, police sources say, he is "a much more dominant force." Also becoming more prominent are Frank Narducci son of the late Frank "Chickie" Narducci; and Salvatore Testa, whose father, PhiL had been the family boss from Bruno's death until his own untimely end a year later. Drugs particularly methamphetamine (speed) and cocaine definitely have become part of the family's daily business. Bruno shunned traffic in narcotics, lucrative as it is.

The younger members of the family didn't like this and other of Bruno's old-fashioned ways. And, lo, Bruno is dead. The membership rolls have been opened. There was for several years under Bruno, a "closing of the books," during which nobody was "made," or passed through the ancient ritual of swearing loyalty and silence that made him (women are not admitted) a full-fledged member of the family. Now, it is believed, there are a number of new "made men." But, as noted, the family does not believe in making announcements about such matters.

Its membership, recently depleted by a number of sudden deaths, is Nicodemo Scarfo. the latest chief OTHER DEATHS followed in the struggle for control and the arguments over who got what in Atlantic City. And, finally, there was Narducci. To some extent before Bruno's death and to a great extent afterward, the family had split into two factions the 9th Street division, mostly old-timers and led by D' Alfonso, and the 11th Streeters, the younger element under Scarfo. Narducci for years had been in charge of gambling operations including the numbers and big card and dice games.

He was responsible for a sizable chunk of the family's income. As the older and younger factions came closer to agreement, they both noticed one thing: Chickie wasn't paying his "dues" to either side. The "take" that had gone to Bruno and later to Testa wasn't going to anyone but Narducci. Continued on Page 52 believed to hover around 120. THE FAMILY HAS COME through an almost unprecedented period of turmoil, dating from the shotgun killing of Bruno outside his South Philadelphia home on March 21, 1980.

Another slaying that of Chickie Narducci near his South Philadelphia home last month is believed to have marked the end of the combat, although there doesn't seem to be anybody on the scene likely to enforce peace as Bruno did. Now that things seem to have settled down, veteran family watchers among law enforcement agencies, generally agree to this script-Bruno was killed because he "thought small," as one investigator said, ignoring the vast riches to be made from narcotics in favor of the steady, but smaller, flow of gold from gambling and loansharking. And, some of the "young Turks" feared, he was giving up too much of Atlantic City, part of the Philadelphia family's territory, to other families..