On the evening of May 20, 1992, James Jimmy Brooms DiAddorio, 55, was shot dead inside the Vulpine Athletic Club in Philadelphia while he was on the telephone. Two gunmen entered the club, opened fire, and fled; a stray bullet wounded a bystander who was treated at a local hospital. DiAddorio had been a former chief of the Delaware River Port Authority who resigned in 1986 after an indictment for attempting to defraud an insurance company and received probation.

Investigators later tied the killing to DiAddorio’s alleged refusal to pay street taxes on his bookmaking and drug operations and to his reported habit of speaking ill of prominent local mob figures in public. Two men, Thomas Tommy Horsehead Scafidi and Martin Marty Angelina, were arrested as suspects; authorities also believed mob figure Joey Merlino participated. No one was ever convicted and the case went cold.