Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires (61 page)

Paroled in 1979 after serving twelve years, the forty-six-year-old Persico was the godfather of one of America’s most prosperous and dangerous criminal organizations. Home again, he lived with his wife, Joyce, and their three sons and daughter in middle-class Hempstead, a Long Island suburb. His working headquarters was an old haunt, a storefront hangout in Carroll Gardens called the Nesta Social Club. Outside of Brooklyn and Long Island, he could usually be found in his nine-bedroom villa on a fifty-nine-acre spread in upstate Saugerties, New York, that he named the “Blue Mountain Manor Horse Farm.” A police raid at the farm shortly after Persico went to prison for hijacking uncovered a stockpile of some 50 rifles and 40 bombs.

Unfortunately for the newly freed Don Carmine, his return coincided with the start of the FBI’s proactive crusade against the five New York families. For the first time, the bureau was directly targeting and surveilling Mafia bosses and their administrations. Agents swooped down on Persico in November 1980 with a twenty-six-count indictment for a conspiracy he had engaged in from prison. His cohort, Hugh McIntosh, and his cousin Andrew “the Fat Man” Russo, a made man, tried to bribe an Internal Revenue Service agent in 1977 and 1978. The mobsters offered $250,000 for either Persico’s early release on the hijacking sentence, or his transfer from the maximum-security federal penitentiary in Atlanta to a less restrictive prison near New York. They also wanted the 1RS agent to fix income-tax cases for a select group of Colombo mafiosi. The agent was working a sting, and Persico’s men not only trapped themselves but also implicated him in their secretly recorded conversations with the supposedly corrupt agent.

Freed on a $250,000 bond in the bribery and conspiracy case, Persico saw his legal problems multiplied, this time because of his older brother, Alphonse “Allie Boy.” Looking for Allie Boy, who had jumped bail on a racketeering charge, federal marshals inadvertently crashed a meeting Carmine was holding
in Brooklyn with other Mafia family leaders in May 1981. Allie Boy was not in attendance, but Carmine was slapped with another serious accusation: violating parole by associating with known criminals.

With no way to slip out of the double-barreled criminal complaints, Persico “copped” a plea bargain for the first time in his life. Wearing a modish three-piece black suit, white shirt, and patterned tie, he admitted to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery and obstruct justice in the 1RS sting. By dropping five other counts, prosecutors spared him the fifteen-year sentence he would have been given if convicted at a trial. Instead, he got a maximum of five years, to run concurrently with a four-year term for parole violation.

It looked like a good bargain in March 1984, when he was released after serving less than three years for the 1RS bribery and parole violations. What he had not anticipated was the government’s next move. Even before his exit from prison, the FBI and federal prosecutors were closing in on him on two fronts: a RICO indictment, citing him as the head of the Colombo family, and his complicity in the Commission case. Seven months after his second release from prison, Persico got wind that his head was on the block again when a law-enforcement official leaked news of his pending arrest to the
New York Post.
Days before the first racketeering indictments charging Persico with being the Colombo boss were unsealed, he vanished, along with his underboss, Gennaro Gerry Lang Langella.

Damon Taylor, the supervisor of the FBI’s Colombo Squad, soon picked up Langella in Brooklyn, disguised with a beard, after being alerted to his whereabouts by an informer. Persico was more slippery, and ended up with the rare distinction of being the only Mafia boss ever included in the FBI’s list of Ten Most Wanted criminals. A four-month manhunt ended when Fred DeChristopher, Persico’s relative and later a witness in the Commission case, disclosed his hideaway: DeChristopher’s home in Wantagh, Long Island. An insurance salesman, DeChristopher was acquainted with the Colombo family through his marriage to Katherine Russo, Persico’s cousin. His wife’s brother, Andy “Fat Man” Russo, was not only Persico’s cousin but a top-echelon Colombo capo.

DeChristopher told the FBI that early in his marriage he got a close-up, frightening view of his brother-in-law. One night, in a restaurant Russo suddenly became irritated with a third man at their table. Grabbing a fork, he
placed the tines on the white of the man’s right eye, hissing, “Look, when I tell you to do something, you do it, okay, asshole?” As the terrified man frantically signaled his compliance, Russo snarled, “The next time you fuck up, I’ll push this fork right into your fucking eye.”

Later that night, Russo proudly explained his modus operandi to DeChristopher. “If they fear you, Freddie, they’ll lick your hand or kiss your feet. They’ll respect you. I’m a gangster, see, Freddie? I can lie, and I can cheat, and I can kill.”

Fleeing from arrest in the Commission and Colombo family indictments, Persico hid out in DeChristopher’s home for three months. He counted on his personal family’s loyalty to shield him, but DeChristopher was the relative who betrayed him.

Outside DeChristopher’s Long Island home, on the afternoon of February 15, 1985, Agent Taylor dialed DeChristopher’s number on a mobile telephone. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Persico,” the agent said when DeChristopher, who was expecting the call, answered the ring. Holding the phone, Persico growled, “Who is this?” The soft-spoken investigator replied, “This is the FBI. We have the house surrounded. Come out with your hands up.”

Persico, who had been sleeping in the attic, marched out with his hands in the air. Another fugitive bagged with him was capo Dominic Donnie Shacks Montemarano. Through a tap on the DeChristopher phone, the FBI knew that Montemarano had been invited for a luncheon conference with the boss, and agents timed the raid to capture him, too. Both gangsters were unarmed. On the ride back to FBI headquarters in Manhattan for booking, Persico seemed unflustered, cracking lighthearted jokes with the agents. He even cordially autographed for Taylor an FBI Most Wanted poster with his photograph displayed prominently on it.

The Colombo family RICO trial in 1986 was a warm-up event for Persico’s Commission trial later that year. The strongest evidence against him was testimony from Fred DeChristopher and former wannabe Joe Cantalupo, also principal witnesses at the Commission trial. DeChristopher’s words were extremely damaging to Persico. He testified that the fugitive Mob boss appeared at his home without warning and simply settled in as an uninvited guest. In convivial moments Carmine delighted in preparing for DeChristopher and his wife one of his favorite dishes, pasta with a simple sauce of olive oil and garlic. To DeChristopher, Persico bragged that he had run the family from prison and that he had stashed away enough cash from his crimes to “last ten lifetimes.”
On another occasion, while reminiscing about his accomplishments, Persico casually mentioned, “I killed Anastasia.” It was a boast that he had belonged to Joey Gallons “barbershop quintet.”

Besides testimony from the informer Cantalupo and the reluctant host DeChristopher, the prosecution counted on electronic eavesdropping. Bugs at the Casa Storta Restaurant that recorded Gerry Langella’s conspiratorial conversations about Colombo family rackets were crucial in securing convictions of Persico and eight codefendants.

Blood and loyalty ties, vital factors in solidifying and protecting Mafia borgatas, backfired this time, entangling Persico’s relatives and his sturdiest friend in a RICO “family” trial. Hugh McIntosh was sentenced to ten years. The Snake’s cousin Andy Russo got fourteen years. Persico, the boss, received a thirty-nine-year term. Probably the most difficult aspect of the trial for him was the involvement of his oldest son, Alphonse, known as “Little Allie Boy,” so as not to be confused with his Uncle Alphonse, Carmine’s brother. Little Allie Boy was convicted of being a capo, supervising family rackets, and trying to bribe prison officials for preferential treatment of his father.

The hard-boiled Carmine Persico declined to seek leniency for himself, but he implored the sentencing judge, John F. Keenan, to spare his thirty-three-year-old son. He contended that Little Allie Boy was innocent and that the turncoat witnesses against him were liars. “I’m not really concerned about myself,” Carmine said as several relatives of the father and son wept in the courtroom.

Judge Keenan imposed a sentence of twelve years on the son. Recommending a stiffer sentence, Aaron A. Marcu, a prosecutor who had spent three years investigating the Colombo family, portrayed Little Allie Boy with these prophetic words: “He is his father’s trusted lieutenant. He is the future of the Colombo family.”

Except for the unlikely possibility of his busting out of a federal prison, even the brazen Carmine Persico realized that a combined 139-year term for the “family” and the Commission RICO convictions, was equivalent to a death sentence. He might be doomed, but he was determined to pass on his scepter to his son and heir. Little Allie Boy could expect parole in eight years at about age forty, still in his prime, ready to be crowned and to reap for many years the illicit wealth produced by the Colombo borgata. Until his son was freed, Persico intended to retain the title of boss and transmit important policy decisions to surrogates, as he had done during previous imprisonments. By maintaining his position, Persico could insure that a large percentage of the Colombo booty
would still be funneled into the coffers of his relatives, just as if he himself were out on the streets. Ever the dutiful husband and father, he wanted to take care of his wife and their three children at home. And it was vital that cash and other assets should be waiting as an inheritance for Little Allie Boy when his prison term expired.

Shortly after the trials of her husband and son, Joyce Smoldono Persico openly expressed her affection for Carmine, insisting that he had been unfairly convicted on flimsy evidence by ambitious prosecutors. “I know the kind of man he is,” she said of her husband in a letter in January 1987 to the newspaper
News-day.
“The love that Carmine and I have for our family and home has helped us through the years of excessive punishment the government has inflicted upon us. We survived the ordeal, Carmine came home, and just when we thought it was safe to resume our lives again, along came RICO and Giuliani.”

Persico also had U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani on his mind. Seeking revenge for his life sentence and his son’s conviction, he put out contracts for the murders of Giuliani; two prosecutors at the Colombo family trial, Aaron Marcu and Bruce A. Baird; the head of the FBI’s Colombo Squad, Damon Taylor; and the case agent, Denis Maduro, who dug up evidence against him and his son. The multiple murder plans were disclosed by Michael Lloyd, a bank robber and thief, whom Persico thoroughly misjudged and took into his confidence while they were fellow inmates at federal prisons in Marion, Illinois, and in Lompoc, California.

Lloyd testified about details of the plots at his parole hearing in 1998, when he revealed that he had been a government informer in prison during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The godfather and the snitch met in 1987 at the federal penitentiary in Marion, one of the government’s toughest maximum-security correctional institutions. Imprisoned with Lloyd for the next eight years in Marion and in Lompoc, Persico took a liking to him and increasingly trusted him. Keeping his ears open, Lloyd culled information about Persico’s surreptitious maneuvers with mobsters on the outside, mainly from working as Persico’s prison secretary.

Over the years, Persico recounted to Lloyd chapters of his lifetime in the Mob, claiming that he was responsible for slaying about twenty-five men, half of them killed by himself. Carmine confided that he used visiting lawyers and relatives to shuttle messages to New York, and that he sanctioned Mob hits by the same relay system. Another method Persico employed was sending letters typed by Lloyd to lawyers, which were passed along to Colombo mobsters.
Prison authorities were barred from opening and reading letters from inmates to lawyers. According to Lloyd, Persico also arranged bribes to prison guards for favors and was allowed to have sex with a woman attorney who visited him in the Lompoc prison.

Lloyd sent his own letters to Giuliani, warning him of Persico’s intentions after he learned Persico had put out hit contracts on prosecutors. Lloyd was then recruited as a government informer under the code name “the Snake Charmer.” His information helped foil Persico’s plots to murder the government officials, but Persico apparently never suspected him.

Double-crossing Carmine Persico was a dangerous pastime, and Lloyd knew the risks he was taking. But ingratiating himself with federal prosecutors could procure an early parole for him. Whatever useful items Lloyd picked up he sent to the FBI through an attorney’s address that was really a mail drop. Federal law-enforcement authorities in New York’s Southern District decided against bringing a new murder conspiracy indictment against Persico because he was already confined behind bars for the remainder of his days. A more important reason for overlooking his homicidal revenge contracts was that additional charges would expose Lloyd as a spy and sever a wellspring of information about shifting fortunes inside the Colombo family. Although serving combined sentences of 139 years, Persico was manipulating events in his borgata on the East Coast from a prison cell in California. Capricious as ever, he had turned on a former deputy, a decision that would generate fateful consequences for his Mafia family. And through Michael Lloyd, the Snake Charmer, Carmine Persico, the Snake, was unwittingly providing insight into an internecine Mob war that he himself had launched.

Carmine’s War