When it was time to cross-examine, Carmine rose and moved to the questioning lectern. He wanted to make it clear to the jury that the whole notion that his meeting, sharing a meal, with Mr. Colombo was evidence of any kind of guilt was ludicrous. This witness simply didn’t know him well enough to say these things about him.
Carmine said, “Mr. Cantelupo, you saw me in a public place. This is a public place, right? It’s not a back of a restaurant, and the office that Joe Colombo worked in there was a big glass window, is that right?”
“Yes,” Cantelupo replied.
“So you could see me, right. You could see from the outer office, you could see into the back?”
“Yes.”
“And I came there to speak with Joe Colombo?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know what I spoke to him about?”
“No, sir.”
“Describe for these people my relationship to you.”
“At that particular time or through the years?”
“At that time and at any time after.”
“Our relationship was only to say hello, shake hands, goodbye, nothing formal.”
“And you never heard what I spoke to Joe Colombo about?”
“ No. ”
“You never sat down in the back office with us, did you?”
“ No. ”
“Did you ever buy me dinner?”
“ No. ”
“We ever go out partying together?”
“ No. ”
“So everything that you spoke here in this courtroom about me was knowledge you picked up from other people?”
“Correct.”
“Let’s talk a little bit now about your cooperation. When did you first start cooperating with the government?”
“Nineteen seventy-three.”
Carmine took Cantelupo through his criminal record. He was arrested for perjury in 1969 and for filing a false loan application in 1971, but nothing came of it.
“Did there come a time when you did not go to jail for burglary, for robberies, because you had a deal with the government?”
“Yes.”
“How much were you paid for information in total between 1973 and 1978?”
“Twenty-four thousand dollars, approximately.”
Carmine’s eyes went wide with surprise, and he turned to the jury to make sure they heard that startling number. He returned his attention to the witness and bore down.
Cantelupo described life—his ratty, ratty life—as an FBI informant, one that came out in the open only in 1978 because his cover was blown.
“Didn’t you testify at one time that the FBI threatened you, told you that they would get you killed, drop your name in the street and have you killed if you didn’t come out?”
“Yes.”
“And then you went into the Witness Protection Program, right?”
“Correct.”
Cantelupo testified that his contract with the government was on a sliding pay scale, and that he was paid by the “value” of the information he testified to. The implication was clear. Carmine was a big fish and no doubt commanded top dollar.
Carmine wanted to demonstrate that Cantelupo was biased against him because of a previous beef with the Persico family, but in doing so he may have done his cause more harm than good.
“Do you feel a bookmaker, a shylock, somebody that deals outside the law is fair game for you to go and borrow money and keep it?”
“ No. ”
“You felt if you borrow money from a shylock you would be obligated to pay him back?”
“Definitely.”
“Alphonse Persico, you owed money to, didn’t you?”
“Your brother?”
“Yes, Alphonse Persico my brother, not my son.”
“Your brother I paid off.”
“Who didn’t you pay off?”
“I left owing money to Dominic Sidoti.”
“Who else?”
“I don’t recollect.”
“The marshals didn’t garnish your pay and go pay those people, did they? They arrested them and sent them to jail on your testimony?”
“As far as I know Sidoti was never arrested and went to jail.”
“Didn’t Alphonse Persico beat you in order to get you to pay the money back?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t he treat you like a piece of garbage? Didn’t he treat you that way, punching you in your face in front of people?”
“I didn’t feel like a piece of garbage.”
“You didn’t feel like a piece of garbage? You hated him for punching you?”
“ No. ”
“And you wouldn’t go to the law to get even with him?”
“ No. ”
“You went to the law because he was doing something wrong, he shylocked you and you went to the law on that?”
“That was over a period of time.”
“Did he shylock you?”
“ No. ”
“You took the money.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You took the money. He didn’t give you the money.”
“He gave me ten-thousand dollars. But not for me. To give to another guy.”
Cantelupo identified the “other guy” as the publisher of pocket-sized paperback books. The publisher, Cantelupo said, didn’t want the money so he took it back. This might not have made much sense to the jury, but Carmine followed with no problem.
“No interest?”
“Two points a week.”
“Didn’t he know you couldn’t pay nobody?”
“I don’t know what he knew.”
“Did he know that you owed lots of money out and didn’t pay anybody?”
“I paid for many years.”
“You had to lie to my brother to get the ten-thousand dollars, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know.”
Carmine’s tone was very sharp now. He was intimidating the witness. The jury didn’t like it. Regardless of the tone, this exchange did as much to help the government’s case as any of the prosecution’s witnesses. His brother, Carmine had made clear, lent people money and beat them up if they didn’t pay it back.
“Mr. Cantelupo, you said Anthony Colombo became a made member in what year?”
“1977.”
“And you was told this?”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t at the ceremony or anything?”
“No, sir. But I heard he’d been made, and I congratulated him.”
“And this is a secret organization, don’t talk, and he comes and you congratulate him?”
“I knew Anthony was made and I congratulated him.”
“And when you meet these people, they are introduced as so-and-so from the Genovese family, this guy’s a good fellow with the Gambino family. Is that how they were introduced?”
“A lot of people confided in me.”
“A lot of people got hurt for confiding in you. You testified against them,” Carmine said. “When you wanted to borrow money from my brother, you could’ve walked away, right?”
“Yes.”
“Nobody put a gun to your head and forced you to take the money?”
“No, sir.”
“You took it because you wasn’t going to pay it back so you didn’t care how much interest they charged you.”
“I took it because it was a good deal.”
“Nothing else,” Carmine said.
Cantelupo breathed a sigh of relief. He still had to be cross-examined by the other defense attorneys, but he felt the worst was over.
On the other hand, Carmine was kicking himself. He’d gotten caught up in the argument and his questions exposed the business.
* * *
Defense attorney Samuel Dawson grabbed the headlines for a day when he acknowledged the existence of the you-know-what: “The Mafia exists and has members. Just because someone is a Mafia member, it doesn’t mean that he committ
ed the crime in the case.”
This was not helpful to his cause. It was as if Dawson didn’t get it. RICO was very clear on that point.
Dawson told the jury that the commission existed as well. But it wasn’t a war council. It didn’t start trouble. Being a member was not a crime. It was more like the United Nations. The members met in an attempt to avoid conflict and prevent violence.
The photos placed into evidence by the government were perhaps the most damning of all. They showed the defendants exiting a May 15, 1984, meeting on Staten Island, proof that the bosses got together as a crime commission to run organized crime in New York City and elsewhere. (Carmine wasn’t there, but only because he was incarcerated. He was represented at the meeting by Lang and Scopo, prosecutors said.)
One of the most damaging tapes was of Fat Tony and Tony Ducks having a conversation in the Palma Boys Social Club. In a nostalgic tone, doused with braggadocio, they discussed the current state of the mob.
“If it wasn’t for me,” Fat Tony said, “there wouldn’t be any mob left. I made all these guys.” He also said, “Tell him the commission from New York—tell him he’s dealing with the big boys now.”
Ducks added to the prosecutorial goldmine by discussing professional killings as something that needed to be carried out without emotion. A disabled target needed to be rubbed out the same as a healthy one. No difference. “He’s crippled, but we do it,” Ducks said. Some of the tapes the feds used against Ducks were from a bug planted in his chauffeur-driven Jaguar.
* * *
Of course, mob trials being what they were, many of the prosecution’s witnesses had questionable credibility. Not only did these wiseguys admit on the stand that they had lied during previous trial testimony, but also that they were there because they’d cut a, for them, sweet deal with the government. These guys were like human bugs, flesh-and-blood surveillance devices, soaking up the details of how operations worked in the mob and spitting it back on cue under oath.
Fred DeChristopher was one of them. A rat among rats. He told the jury about how he had offered Carmine a place to hide and immediately called the FBI to tell them about it. DeChristopher described in detail how Carmine ran his business.
“And what was his business?” Chertoff asked.
“His business was running a crime family.”
“Did he actually use the words ‘crime family’?”
“No. He would never say that.”
Chertoff asked, “Mr. DeChristopher, do you recall a conversation you had with Andrew ‘Mush’ Russo not long after the attempted assassination of Joseph Colombo?”
“I do. Russo told me that with Colombo out of commission, Carmine Persico was the boss now. Not long after that, Persico went to jail, but he stayed boss. The only thing that changed was they moved Junior’s headquarters to the Diplomat at Third Avenue and Carroll Street.” He testified that Carmine was boss, and that Lang and Scopo were Carmine’s “key men.”
“Was there an acting boss when Carmine Persico was in jail?”
“Yes.”
“And who was it?”
“Tommy DiBella was the acting boss of the Persico family, uh, I mean the Colombo family.”
“Did Carmine Persico have a nickname for Tommy DiBella?”
“Yes, he called him the Old Man.”
According to DeChristopher, Scopo controlled the cement and concrete workers’ union. The concrete workers’ union, in fact, was Carmine’s biggest skim. All deals of under $2 million, the Colombos got two points, anything over $2 million, they had to share the booty with the other families. You couldn’t pour cement anywhere in the five boroughs without Carmine getting a cut. It was called The Concrete Club. After spending the bulk of the 1970s in prison for hijacking, Carmine emerged into the light to discover that a lot of people owed him money. Deals he had cut had been allowed to deteriorate. Carmine, for example, was supposed to get a third of the Tampa docks, but had only been getting ten percent. One guy was giving him ten percent of fifty percent. He had debts to collect, something he’d always been very good at. As soon as he got out of prison he sat down with the other bosses and explained the deals he had made and the amount he was owed. The percentages returned to those originally agreed upon and the retro debt was paid with a combination of cash and future power and turf considerations.
“Did he have comments regarding the other bosses?” Chertoff asked.
“Yeah,” DeChristopher replied. “He said Tony Salerno was a big earner. He told me, ‘The guy has more money than me. ’”
The gallery looked to Fat Tony at the defendant’s table, but he looked as miserable as ever with his inflamed eye and gnawing hunger pangs.
“When Mr. Persico got out of prison in 1979, how did he refer to the other bosses?”
“He always called them ‘my friends. ’”
“How did it come about that the defendant Carmine Persico came to stay at your house?”
“My brother-in-law, Andrew Russo, said Junior needed a quiet place to stay away from the limelight. My daughter’s wedding had just ended, so she had vacated her attic room, and he said Junior only needed a place for two weeks. So he stayed up there.”
“You were to be compensated?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Seven-hundred dollars a week.”
“Did Junior offer to pay you for your hospitality?” Chertoff asked.
“He told me he had a lot of money on him and I should tell him if I needed anything. I was welcome to take whatever I needed. And I declined. But he is a very generous man. He is. He said all of the companies he had an interest in, I should sell them insurance. He was sure they would be receptive.”
“What did he tell you about money?”
“He told me he wished his money was his only problem, that he had enough money to last ten lifetimes.”
“Is that his words?”
“That’s his words.”
“How long did Carmine Persico live at your house?”
“Three months.”
“Did he have a set schedule?”
“He got up about three in the afternoon, had breakfast and read the newspapers, Post, Daily News, and Newsday. He’d catch some early news on TV. Then we’d cook dinner. After dinner we would sit around and he’d read a little more or watch the news until about midnight. Him and I would generally play cards and about two o’clock there was a game show that would come on and he’d watch that and go to bed.”
“When watching the news, was there any particular news that you observed him paying particularly close attention to?”
“Yes, anything that had to do with organized crime and the indictments, the arrests.”
“Did you leave the house for any extended period of time while Junior was there?”
“I didn’t. I had been advised that Junior did not like to be alone.”
Carmine, DeChristopher said, talked about the indictments against him. He said he learned about them when a reporter for the Post called him and told him about them. He talked about his 1972 to 1979 prison stint and how for part of that stretch they had him cooped up in Marion where it was hard to do business because of limited visitor- and phone-privileges. Carmine told him about how much easier it was to run things when he was on the street. Problems had come up when he was in jail that would have been solved like that, snap of the fingers, if he’d been out.
DeChristopher recalled a time when attempts were made to serve a subpoena on him to testify regarding his brother-in-law Mush’s taxes. The government wanted to talk about the house in Farmingdale that he was living in, the one he’d gotten from Mush. Instead of testifying against his brother-in-law, DeChristopher “went away for awhile.” He hid out in the Boston area for a couple of months. He moved out of Mush’s house and into his current home in Wantagh in 1979.
During the direct examination of Fred DeChristopher, Carmine on several occasions became concerned that the jury would hear references to Carmine b
eing involved in a second trial, the Colombo case. He did not want the jury to know he was being tried twice at once in the same building but with different judges. Also, a previous witness had described him as a “fugitive,” a characterization he thought prejudicial to the jury.
This just delayed the inevitable. Carmine had gabbed away about this and that while living in DeChristopher’s house, and now it was all going to come back to slap him in the face. Carmine told Fred that Donnie Shacks was a tough guy, a guy who did things correctly when doing them for himself but ass backwards if he did them for anyone else. He said Mush was a guy for whom he had “tremendous respect,” as a relative, a friend, and a top guy in the organization. He said Anthony “Scappi” Scarpati, a guy DeChristopher had spotted lurking outside his house while Carmine was staying there, was a friend from childhood. He told Fred about how teenaged Scappi did time, but when he got out Carmine immediately gave him a key position in his crew. He said he had great affection for his brother Alphonse, another guy who did a long stretch but had a job waiting for him when he got out. Carmine never put brother Allie Boy in charge of anything too complicated. His son Alphonse, on the other hand, was a person whose ideas Carmine respected. Little Allie Boy was allowed to give counsel.
Chertoff said, “Mr. DeChristopher, directing your attention to the period 1981 to 1984, when Carmine Persico was in prison,” for parole violation, “what if anything did he tell you about his activities at that time?”
“He said when he went back to prison a second time he had no problem running his family. He said he had almost complete access to phones, visitors, as often as he wanted. He ate what and when he wanted to eat. He said it was pretty comfortable for him the second time.”
“Did he say anything else about the running of his family during that time period?”
“Yes. He said that Gerry Lang and Donnie Shacks had the biggest role in running the family while he was in prison.”
“What, if anything, did Mr. Persico tell you about Ralph Scopo?”
“He said Scopo was his front man in the Cement and Concrete Workers Union and not a yard of concrete was poured in the City of New York where he and his friends didn’t get a piece of it.”
* * *
One thing about a trial with multiple defendants, after a witness had been questioned by the prosecution, each defense attorney had an opportunity to cross-examine. Although Judge Owens made it clear that he would not tolerate redundancy. As a rule, each witness affected one of the defendants more than the others, and many of the off-point lawyers waived cross-examination. Before the first witness was called, Carmine sat down with the attorneys defending the other so-called commissioners, and they had agreed that Carmine, should he choose, could be first to cross-examine. When it came time to cross-examine DeChristopher, Carmine Persico was practically licking his chops.
Carmine the Snake Page 18