By ALAN GUENTHER
Courier-Post Staff
MONROE

Anthony "Butch" D'Alessandro says everyone knows he has a gun collection that would make the National Rifle Association jealous, and he's not afraid to help his friends.

Even so, he has no answers for police who are investigating why his buddy and political ally, Anthony Scarduzio, chose D'Alessandro's home to stage a bloody end to his life.

Perhaps, with D'Alessandro, 72, out of the home on a doctor's visit, Scarduzio knew there could be easy access to weapons at the D'Alessandro residence.

A tough-talking Democratic activist who learned his street smarts growing up in South Philadelphia, D'Alessandro has been a cornerstone of the rough-and-tumble Gloucester County politics for more than 30 years.

On Tuesday, he described his personal arsenal, which has been temporarily seized by police.

•On his side of the bed, D'Alessandro sleeps near a stainless steel, snub-nosed, .38-caliber pistol.

•His wife, Edna, sleeps with a loaded, .38-caliber Derringer near her pillow.

•The TV stand in the living room is guarded by a Colt Cobra pistol, gleaming with pearl handles and nickel plating.

But that's not all.

By the back door, two shotguns stand ready in cases.

The one Scarduzio used "to blow his head off," said D' Alessandro, was "a pump gun," a shotgun with an 18-inch barrel similar to those used by police.

The other shotgun was not loaded.

At least three smaller pistols were in the house, and they were not legally registered, D'Alessandro said. His wife has been frequently ill, suffering from complications of a stroke, and he said he has not had time to register them.

He maintains and carries the weapons, D'Alessandro said, because "I always have cash on me. I never wrote a check in my life."

Throughout the past 30 years in Gloucester County, he has worked in the produce business, the used furniture business, and at one point owned a small restaurant, dubbed Butch's Little Ponderosa.

He knows people think his weapon collection is odd.

"They think I'm a nut," he says. "But they don't (mess) with me."

Former Assemblyman Tony Marsella says "some people visualize Butch as a nut." But they like him, Marsella says, "because he fights for people."

D'Alessandro's attorney, Michael Fritz, allows that D' Alessandro "has more weapons than the average person." But he calls D'Alessandro "a real original" and "a true American."

Throughout his career in politics, D'Alessandro always joked that he kept a list of the politicians he would shoot if he ever knew he had only a short time to live.

"We were always joking," he said.

Many of the people on his hit list are his friends, he said. "We would fight. We would make up. And it would be over. It was fun in the old days."

And he had no idea that some day, an old friend would break into his home and use one of his guns to commit such violence.

"He was a nice guy," said D'Alessandro of Scarduzio. "I don't understand this. ... I feel sorry for him, and his family."