Just as any lawyer might, Carmine attacked DeChristopher’s credibility, pointing out contradicting statements he had made in the past. He added that there was no credible evidence supporting the charges he faced.
The prosecution objected vigorously. Judge Owen sustained.
“Mr. Persico, please refrain from giving your closing argument until the appropriate time.”
“Isn’t it true that you made up lies about me to get the $50,000 reward?” Carmine asked.
“No, Junior, it is not,” DeChristopher said.
“Isn’t it true you’re a liar? That you lied about me to cash in?” He snuck a glance at the jury. DeChristopher’s answers didn’t matter. It was the questions he wanted the jurors to hear.
“Objection, asked and answered.”
“Sustained, Mr. Persico, please.”
Judge Owen frowned, and banged his gavel.
“I beg your pardon, Your Honor,” Carmine said.
Judge Owen added, “Mr. Persico, I am going to ask you to address yourself in the third person.”
Carmine blinked twice, and said, “Such as?”
“Such as, ‘Did you say this to Mr. Persico?’ ‘Was Mr. Persico there?’ You have in the past said to a cop, ‘Didn’t you put the gun to my head?’ The proper form of the question, in my judgment, because you are a lawyer when you are standing at that questioning lectern, would be to say to the officer, ‘Didn’t you put the gun to Mr. Persico’s head?’”
Carmine said he understood. But the lesson only partly took. Most of the time the witness continued to call Mr. Persico “Junior,” while Mr. Persico referred to himself in the first person.
Mr. Persico knew why DeChristopher was so desperate to work for the government. Money. Fred was in debt to an unhealthy degree. Carmine had a list of people to whom DeChristopher was rumored to owe money, and he ran down the list with the witness, asking how much he owed. Legal decorum went out the window, and no one objected.
“Did we forget any other money that you owe people?”
“That’s possible, Junior.”
“You need time to think? I’d like to know who else you owe money to.”
“I don’t know, Junior. You tell me.”
Carmine attempted to draw out DeChristopher’s hypocrisy. Didn’t DeChristopher get $500 a week from restaurants to keep the union out? Didn’t he threaten them with a black mob throwing things through his windows? Didn’t he use Lenny Montana to intimidate people? Did he say things like, “If you wasn’t our good friend, we would kill you”? Didn’t he use certain restaurants as a personal check-cashing service, because they were afraid of him? Didn’t he sic the union on businesses that didn’t pay? Didn’t he arrange for a food critic to give a restaurant a favorable review in exchange for a piece of the place? Didn’t he do that knowing full well the owner had cancer and not long to live? Didn’t he try to get a life insurance policy—no physical, of course—for the dying guy with the agreement to split the payout with the widow? Didn’t he assault the widow?
DeChristopher denied some of it. The rest he said he couldn’t remember.
“Why did you shake them down?”
“I shaked them down, Junior?”
“Yes, you shook them down.”
“Why did I shake them down?”
“I’m asking you.”
“I never shook them.”
Judge Owen interrupted, “Are you finished, Mr. Persico?”
“I’m not finished. I’ve got a lot more to go,” Carmine replied, as if he were describing his life.
Judge Owen threw up his hands. “There is a lot of back and forth going on here that I can’t control,” he said wearily.
The jury looked annoyed. Carmine’s bully side had again surfaced.
It is common practice during trials to have “sidebars,” meetings of counsel with the judge at the front of the courtroom, conversations not for the jury’s ears. The defendant is usually left alone at the defense table during this process, so it was an odd sight when Carmine joined in the sidebars, arguing a point in a hushed tone.
Carmine continued to grill DeChristopher. Didn’t a certain restaurant owner come to him for a favor when one of his waiters was blackmailing him? The witness said it was sort of true. They really were trying to get in touch with Mush, and he was a conduit.
“Isn’t it a fact, sir, that four months after you married Katherine Russo you got in touch with the FBI to inform upon her brother?”
“That’s true, that’s true.”
“And at that time, February and March of 1974, did you have any specific problems with Andrew Russo? Did he intervene in your marriage? Did he try to meddle in your personal and family affairs?”
“No, sir.”
“Yet you called the FBI and started giving them information about Andrew, is that right?”
“Yes, it is.”
“What was your reason?”
“I think they are despicable,” DeChristopher said, apparently referring to gangsters in general. “They are the most despicable people on the face of the earth and that’s why I began to do it.”
“And knowing that Andrew Russo was one of those despicable people, you nonetheless married into that family, is that right?”
“I married Katherine, not the family.”
“You chose Andrew to be your best man.”
“She chose him to be best man.”
“When you hooked up people with beefs with people who fixed problems, did you say, ‘Stay away from those people, they are despicable’?”
Chertoff: “Objection. Argumentative.”
Judge Owen sustained.
The cross-examination had become a toe-to-toe fight with both men landing solid blows, neither playing defense. To the referee, Judge Owen, it had started to sound like a family argument, and he stepped in.
During a recess, attorney Frank Lopez, the man who would have represented Carmine had he not been repping himself, spoke with a reporter in the hall. Naturally, Carmine’s performance came up.
“He’s coming off like a human being,” Lopez said. “The jury understands that he’s not a lawyer.”
“Witnesses are afraid of him,” the reporter said.
Lopez laughed lightly, a “ya think?” laugh. “He is placed in an advantageous position when there are witnesses affecting him. He’s not only an attorney in this case, they tell me he’s also a boss.”
* * *
When the government rested, Carmine called only one defense witness, his cousin Kim Roggeman, Fred’s step-daughter, the original occupant of the attic room Carmine had lived in for three months. She said she was a teacher, that she’d just had a baby. She testified that she was fourteen years old when Fred DeChristopher married her mother. She’d known Carmine Persico her entire life. She’d seen him three of four times a week during the time he was living with Fred and her mom. Her understanding was that cousin Carmine was staying for a while because he had some problems he was working through. She hadn’t asked what the problems were. She never heard Carmine say any of the things Fred said he said, and as far as she knew, Cousin Carmine was a highly successful legitimate businessman.
“Did you ever hear your father and Mr. Persico or anyone discuss the construction business?”
“ No. ”
He listed his co-defendants. Had she ever heard Fred and Carmine mention any of them. She hadn’t. During the time that Mr. Persico lived at the DeChristophers’, did Roggeman ever see his wife Joyce or son Al. She had not. She remembered Carmine’s stay as a fun time. They played cards and Trivial Pursuit. She heard some business talk from the men, but all legitimate stuff, like getting together and opening a coffee shop.
As Roggeman stepped down from the witness stand, Judge Owens said, “Mr. Persico, will you be calling another witness?”
“No, Your Honor,” Carmine said. “The defense for Carmine Persico rests.”
* * *
While Michael Chertoff handled the opening statement
and much of the questioning of witnesses during the trial, it was his youthful prosecution teammate, U.S. Attorney John F. Savarese who delivered the closing argument. It was an artful speech that helped win Savarese the Attorney General’s John Marshall Award for Outstanding Legal Achievement. Regarding Junior, Savarese said, “Persico would like you to accept his smoke screen and believe that the money that furnished an estate like the one in Saugerties just came out of thin air, it didn’t come from any of his criminal activities. Remember what he told Fred DeChristopher: ‘I’ve got enough money for ten lifetimes. ’”
Eventually it came time for Carmine’s closing argument, and he didn’t pass up the opportunity to raise his own voice in one final plea for common sense.
CHAPTER TWELVE
La mia voce
“YOUR HONOR, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, at the beginning of the case I told you I wasn’t a lawyer. I guess you found out that’s true. I don’t think I could speak as well as all these people did, but I am going to try to make you understand what the facts are in this case. I am going to try to tell you what I think: To me, it is like a bus ride in a sightseeing tour. You came here. We had the opening statements. The government told you what they intended to prove. The gentlemen of the defense told you what they said they couldn’t prove. We had the witnesses take the stand, direct, cross. Now we come to the summations. And that is the tour. That is the sightseeing bus tour.
“Mr. Savarese, the other day, put us all on the bus, the whole bunch of us, and he was going to take us through the tour and show us what the evidence was, as he has seen it. We got on the bus. And where did he take us? He took us to tinseltown, Hollywood town, cardboard town. Big maps, big signs, theater marquee.
“In a movie, in a Hollywood production, you always try to use top names, stars, to attract attention, Genovese family, Gambino family, names that have been around for a lot of years and everybody is familiar with it.
“So that is part of the tour. That’s what I think the case is. But on that bus tour you come to a rest stop, a rest area, and that is the defense summation. At that rest area, we try to go over what he told you on the tour, what case happened, because there is a return trip. You have to get back on that bus and come back the other way and they are going to put another tour guide on that bus.
“Mr. Savarese got on the bus right in the front and, as all tour guides do, started to tell you what he had seen and what he built on the way. I quote from Mr. Savarese’s summation, ‘Put aside any preconceptions or prejudice you might have about the Mafia.’ And, ‘It’s true that you should not convict just because a defendant is a member of the Mafia.’ And, ‘Sure, membership alone is not enough. It is not in itself a crime.’ You have been told that a couple of times, while you were being picked, selected as jurors. Mr. Savarese acknowledges it and of course the defense asks you to keep that in mind.
“Not only is it not a crime to be a member. You have to prove in this case that somebody not only agreed to commit a crime, but did commit a crime. We are going to look for that agreement. I don’t think you are going to find it as to Carmine Persico. As I stand here, I only talk about Carmine Persico. I am going to try not to mention any of the other defendants in this case because they will defend themselves.
“Another thing he said at the beginning of the summation that I want to bring to your attention. The government spent a lot of time on membership and proving who was boss with big charts and everything. We will go through it a little bit. I want to bring your attention to another thing Mr. Savarese said while we were going through this town on this tour: ‘Now, the government has not charged these other men with involvement in the murder because we have no direct evidence.’ Direct evidence. I say he has no direct evidence not only to the murder case against Carmine Persico. I say in the concrete and extortion case he has no evidence.
“You remember Fred DeChristopher—we will talk about him later—he says Carmine Persico voted not to kill Galante. The government didn’t even consider that direct evidence or else they would have indicted me in the murder. They didn’t indict me. They chose not to indict me in the murder because they had no direct evidence. Without Fred DeChristopher, Carmine Persico wouldn’t be in this courtroom.
“There is another kind of evidence—circumstantial evidence. We will talk about that, too. But direct evidence, Mr. Savarese admits that he can’t indict us because there was no direct evidence in the murder.
“They have to prove two predicate acts in order to convict me of a RICO count. I say they can’t prove even one act, let alone two acts. There is no direct evidence and there is no circumstantial evidence. A lot of smoke, a lot of cardboard scenery, a lot of big charts. Fake towns.
“They spent a lot of time trying to prove who was the boss of the Colombo family, who was the boss of this family. They went back to 1957 to Apalachin. Brought in pictures of the farm up there. 1957. Lawyers all objected. ‘Your Honor, objection. Objection. ’ The judge said, ‘I will let it in for history.’ I say that is history, all right, ancient history. It doesn’t bear on anyone in this courtroom. Mr. Savarese didn’t say anybody at this table was at Apalachin.”
“And who do they bring in? Who did they bring in to prove Carmine Persico was a boss? Cantelupo. Well, we can talk about him, Cantelupo. Cantelupo is one of them witnesses I told you about in my opening. Immunity. Paid substantially. Called him back whenever they needed him. Threw him out of the program whenever they didn’t want him. Brought him back again. I hope they don’t try to say he is my friend because I never received a Christmas gift off of him. I never went out to dinner with him. You heard who went out to dinner with him. He told you that. You heard who he sent gifts to for Christmas. He got so good at it he negotiates his own deals, He didn’t even need a lawyer. They didn’t even give him a list of lawyers to pick from because he had been testifying, wheeling and dealing with the government since 19—what did he say, ’72, ’73, ’71? I forget. But it’s in the record. Yes, he asked him did you make a deal with the government for this to come here and testify? Did you have a lawyer make the deal? No, he made it himself. He told you all about how he lied to all the agents. Full immunity. Bold and brazen—and he was bold and brazen. You seen it. I told you to look for it. And I think I proved that. If not, he helped me prove it. All the stickups, all the robberies, narcotics he sold. They didn’t put him in jail. They kept putting him on the stand to testify against everybody. And every time he got on he had more to tell. He forgot to tell them. They didn’t write it down. He remembered it here. If an agent wrote something in the record, he said I didn’t say that, that’s not my words.
“Let me read you some of his testimony.”
Carmine read from the court transcript an exchange in which Savarese, referring to a time after the shooting of Joe Colombo, had tried to get Cantelupo to say the phrase “acting boss” to describe someone. Cantelupo wouldn’t do it, and insisted on the word “boss” instead. Carmine’s thinking was that the government was trying to program the phrase “acting boss” into the jury’s collective mind.
“You see, you have to get programmed to using the word acting boss. Because he has to act for Carmine Persico. Because Carmine Persico is never around. All these years talking about, all these things going, driving through the town, can’t put Carmine Persico on the scene, so he has to put in the word ‘acting. ’ And that’s not the last acting boss he’s got. He has got plenty of them. They change. Like they take them up and put them down like the names they put on that chart, the marquee we will call it. When the movie changes, they take the sign down and that’s what they did. Acting. Misstating.
“Talk about the Colombo family, about the boss, about this, which is not necessary, they say, because that’s not a crime. But let’s see what they did. They went back to Apalachin. They brought in pictures and cops about an arrest in LaStella’s restaurant in Queens, happened sometime in the sixties. It’s a restaurant open for the public. A couple of people went in there to
eat. They were arrested. Mafia meeting. House of Chan, a few more people got together to have dinner. They didn’t hide. They went in restaurants, public places. Again, a Mafia meeting. Everything. Say they are going to take you through the dark worlds of the underworld. Restaurants, House of Chan. You heard me ask the FBI agent that surveilled me there. Were there other customers? Was the place closed? Was the place open? A lot of people in the restaurant, he said.
“After Cantelupo, they brought another witness in. This one is a good one. Angelo Lonardo. Bold and brazen, drug dealer, lonesome in prison. Wanted to come home. So he called up the agents, told them everything he knew. They went back to that judge in Cleveland, promised to help Lonardo get him bail so he could get out, help the agents clean up organized crime. The judge wouldn’t give him bail. That judge denied him. What’s he have to do? Tell him you have to do better than that. The only one you can talk to. That is Giuliani, the U.S. Attorney in New York, somebody important in the Justice department. They tell him you have to do better than that. That’s on page 711 of the transcripts. Good number. Lucky number. It was lucky for Lonardo. He got out. He’s not living in jail any more. He said he can’t go where he wants but he’s eating a little better. They told him they could make a deal but they couldn’t write it down. I don’t know why they couldn’t write it down. They were hiding anything? Was that in the darkness? Or was that in the light? Whatever it was, he spoke to the right person because he’s not there no more. He’s not in jail no more. And you know what happened? That judge in Cleveland did cut his sentence—only after he spoke to Mr. Giuliani. That’s the power I spoke about in my opening, so I guess I kept my promise to you on that.
Carmine the Snake Page 19