For the rest of the century, Riccobene would have a profound influence on Philadelphia's La Cosa Nostra.
And, despite his death from cancer in state prison in June, Riccobene continues to cast a long shadow on the local mob from his grave.
Battered by arrests and defections, that mob bears little resemblance to the 13 organized crime regimes in which the diminutive Riccobene played a role for more than 70 years. No other Philadelphia mobster was that active for that long.
So impotent is the mob today that the five most recent crime bosses are in jail.
The most recent boss, Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino, is awaiting trial on murder charges. His predecessor, Ralph Natale, is the first mob boss in the country to turn government informant and was the star witness in the recent corruption trial that led to the conviction of Camden Mayor Milton Milan.
BY HIS OWN choice, Riccobene never rose above the rank of soldier, but did become the mob's elder statesman.
And he never ratted, not even after Assistant District Attorney Arnold Gordon put him away for life in the 1982 murder of consigliere Frank Monte.
Normally close-mouthed, Riccobene talked at length to the Daily News about his decades in organized crime - from turn-of-the century Sicilian mafiosi, through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression to the post-modern days of mob snitching and drug importing - before he died of cancer on June 19 in Dallas state prison.
The witty, charming and dangerous little man with the full white beard was one month shy of his 90th birthday.
"He may have looked like Santa Claus, but he was evil," said a lawman who knew him.
He was initiated into La Cosa Nostra - "This Thing of Ours" - the same way he left it, during a bloody gangland war.
