John Carlyle Berkery pictured in Inquirer and Daily News articles over the years. Read more Inquirer file photos

by Barbara Laker and Maggie Prosser Published Sept. 14, 2025, 4:35 p.m. ET

John Carlyle Berkery was one of Philadelphia’s most clever, charming, stylish, cunning, and fascinating criminals.

With a combination of luck, wit, and smarts, he was often able to escape the grips of law enforcement. Over and over again.

And he loved to taunt and outrun the feds.

In the 1950s, the beefy 6-foot-1 Berkery went from running a bar near Kensington and Allegheny Avenues to becoming a leader of the K&A Gang , also known as the Northeast Philly Irish Mob. They started with burglaries and gambling but by the early 1980s had expanded into a lucrative drug operation.

Berkery, w

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