Book Description

Johnny Burke begins our story as an 18-year-old orphaned, homeless and delinquent youth roaming the hard-scrabble streets of Philadelphia's factory-filled, blue-collar Kensington neighborhood, struggling to survive during the decade following the end of WWII. Burke's milieu is the corner of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, Kensington's main intersection, or K&A, as the locals have dubbed it; it is also the time of the genesis of what would later become known to press and police alike as the “K&A Gang”, originally a group of disaffected war vets and reform-school graduates, mostly of Irish-American descent, who would rise from street-fighting and stealing car batteries to become some of the most prosperous and proficient professional jewel thieves in America, plundering affluent suburbs from Maine to Florida and the Mid-and-Southwest of copious amounts of diamonds, furs, silverware, bearer bonds, and cash, for well over a decade. Burke's mentor and surrogate big brother at K&A is Billy “Willie” Sears, a rock-jawed,iron-fisted street battler, and leader of the group. As their fortunes advance and eventually diverge, the Sears's move to the South Jersey seashore, having bought a cocktail lounge, The Tropics, nearby; the Burkes move to a New Jersey suburb of Philadelphia and Burke gets involved in the Philly night-club scene and in loansharking. Along the way, he meets the flamboyant and gorgeous Jewish ex-chorus girl Lillian Reis, who operates a club nearby. The Blaney brothers are arrested for a burglary in Philadelphia in 1959 and Richie Blaney, a notorious police informer, is jailed for parole violation Some of the guys he put inside are just waiting for him to come into the general popul-ation. Richie spins the publicity-hungry Captain Ferguson a tale of an alleged half-million dollar burglary at the home of a Sicilian millionaire coal operator named appropriately John B. Rich. Richie Blaney identifies the perpetrators as his old enemy Burke, Lillian Reis, her boyfriend, his brother, Barney, and another Kensington nobody. The pairing of his two worst enemies, Ferguson and Richie Blaney, creates a perfect storm for Burke to deal with. The press goes into a feeding frenzy due to the glamorous and photogenic Reis and the size of the alleged 'score'. Meanwhile, Burke has become friendly with Felix John “Skinny Razor” DiTullio, the most feared gangster in the Philadelphia underworld, rumored to have many notches in his belt from the gang wars of the Thirties, During the Summer preceding the trial, one of the defendants in the Pottsville case, is found on the parking lot of a hospital nearly dead; he has been beaten to a pulp, shot, and stabbed numerous times. When questioned, he refuses to cooperate further with Ferguson in Pottsville, Burke is held as a material witness due to the fact that he was the last person known to have been with the victim prior to the attack. Barney Blaney, turns up in the Atlantic Ocean off Atlantic City, wrapped in chains and shot in the back of the head. On the afternoon of July 27th, 1961, Richie Blaney turns on the ignition of his car and is blown to smithereens. The car's hood is found on a rooftop two blocks away. It is his 27th birthday. That same evening, State Sen. Ben Donolow, Burke's lawyer, offers Burke for questioning, along with Lillian Reis and “Junior” Staino. After a few hours of grilling, all are released. The public and the news media, however, see Blaney's demise as of little loss to society. Finally, on January 20th, 1964, Burke's last bailable appeal is denied.. A month later, Billy Sears is murdered in his Cadillac in Atlantic City ironically by an old has-been. Burke's conviction is finally reversed and Burke soon gets word that LCN Boss Angelo Bruno wants to see him. In Book Two, Burke eventually becomes the highest-ranking non-member of the Philly LCN, and soon finds himself smack in the middle of the bloodiest Philly mob war since Prohibition.