Also this issue:

The Battle of Fort Mifflin
The city is miffed over a website -- created by the fort’s executive director -- which takes potshots at the airport and Osama.
-Daryl Gale

Safe Streets Fallout
17th District cops want the public to know they are out there.
-Daryl Gale

Debt and Taxes
The BRT and City Councilman Frank DiCicco are at war over the recent property tax hike.
-Jenn Carbin

Judicious
-Mary F. Patel

In Black and White
The Daily News draws fire for a cover some found racist.
-Deborah Bolling

The Bell Curve
City Paper's weekly gauge of Philly's Quality of Life

September 12-18, 2002

city beat

Love Story

A smile to die for: ãNicky Slickä wanted to kill himself to improve Ruthann Seccioâs movie hopes.

A jailed mobster mulls suicide to help the woman he loves land a movie deal.

by Howard Altman

Reporters get letters from prisoners all the time, usually extolling innocence and virtue.

But the letter Jim Barry received on Aug. 5 was different. It was from a jailed mobster threatening to kill himself. Not just because he “didn’t do it” -- “it” being the February 2000 murder of Tad Rice-Green inside Club Deco for which he was convicted. No, the mobster, Nicky “Nicky Slick” DiPietro, was threatening to do himself in to impress a woman he is madly in love with -- Ruthann Seccio, otherwise known as the girlfriend of imprisoned mob boss Ralph Natale.

Barry had written about DiPietro's case for City Paper before he became a producer at KYW-TV. Barry continued to work on the DiPietro story for KYW-TV and had been in contact with DiPietro, who sent the letter to Barry at the television station.

DiPietro's nine-page, handwritten letter starts off by saying "Jim, that was a very good article you wrote for me. It told the honest to god truth that I am innocent."

From there, DiPietro confesses that he "loves [Ruthann] very much" and has "loved her since we were kids. She is my first kiss and my first love and I can't hold her or protect her from harm."

But it isn't unrequited love that has inspired DiPietro to off himself.

"We all know Ruthie is trying to make a movie," he wrote. "... What if I kill myself and you could do a big story on her and Ralph and how I even killed myself cause I was so in love with her. Maybe her movie people would be more interested if a mob soldier killed himself over her. Maybe they would do her movie after all and she could get rich and live happily ever after?"

DiPietro goes on for several more pages about how Seccio stood by him when no one else would and how "I always made money whether it was bringing a car to a chop shop or cracking heads." He never describes how he was going to commit suicide.

KYW-TV contacted prison officials immediately after receiving the letter.

"If we would ever get a letter or a phone call from someone threatening to kill themselves, I feel we have an obligation to notify some officials who can step in to get this person help," said KYW-TV news director Susan Schiller. "That's all we did. It's the same thing we would have done in the same position with anyone else." Barry referred calls to Schiller.

Prison officials at the State Correctional Institution in Dallas, Pa., where DiPietro is serving a life sentence for the Rice-Green murder, confirm that they were contacted by the television station.

"Nothing happened," said Deputy Superintendent James McGrady. "He didn't attempt suicide, he didn't try it, he didn't do it."

Attempts to reach DiPietro through his attorney, Kevin Jarrett, were unsuccessful. Jarrett did not return City Paper's calls.

For her part, a clearly exasperated Seccio said, "I am going to kill him.

"I don't know what to say about the letter," she said. "He is a nice guy. We were friends since we were 13, I know him from my neighborhood. I know he is innocent and I am trying to help get him out."

DiPietro, she said, "is not used to people being there without looking for something in return. I am flattered, but there is nothing more that I can do for him but fight for his right to come home."

Seccio said she is not in love with DiPietro, never has been and is "embarrassed" by the volume of letters she has received from him -- about 100 -- and by his threat to kill himself to help her movie career.

"He is in a fragile state of mind at this point," Seccio said. "It is absurd for him to kill himself to make my movie better. That is ridiculous. My life has enough drama. I don't need anything added to it."

Seccio said she is about to sign a movie deal to portray her life, from a tough street kid growing up in South Philly to her days as mistress to the head of the mob.

Bobby Simone, who represented DiPietro, said he wasn't aware of the specifics of the suicide letter, but was not surprised. The letter "sounds like it is coming from an unsound mind," Simone said. "It does not sound like a rational mind. Her story has nothing to do with him."

Simone adds that he is aware of Seccio's movie negotiations, but that she has not closed any deals yet.

"She was contacted by producers, she has an entertainment lawyer representing her and there is a lot of interest in her story, apparently. But until you get the check, there is no deal."