Carmine the Snake

by Frank DiMatteo

  The feds didn’t believe in giving a break to guys who’d just served a stretch. They were relentless. Six months after Orena was convicted, Carmine’s son Allie Boy, only recently out of jail, was one of eleven Colombos and associates indicted in crimes committed during the Persico-Orena war. The indictments were made public on May 14, 1993 in the Federal District Court in Brooklyn. Allie Boy was charged with involvement in five of the murders committed during the war: the murders of Vincent Fusaro, Nicky Black, John Minerva, Michael Imbergamo, and Lorenzo Lampasi.

  * * *

  In March 1993, Ralphie Scopo died in prison, less than a decade into his 100-year sentence. Seven months later, on Wednesday night, October 20, Ralphie’s son, forty-seven-year-old Joseph Scopo was returning home following dinner with two men in their twenties, his nephew Dominic Logazzo and future son-in-law Angelo Barrone. It was about 11:00 P.M. and Scopo, a Colombo officer, was in the passenger seat of a tan and gold 1993 Nissan Altima. Barrone drove, Logazzo was in the backseat. They’d just pulled up in front of Scopo’s home in Ozone Park, Queens, a gray two-story rowhouse. Several hooded gunmen approached the car and fired with at least one .380 automatic pistol and one Mac-10 automatic pistol. Twenty-three shells were recovered at the scene, but crime-scene investigators later theorized that more than thirty shots were fired. Scopo got out of the car and tried to make a run for it.

  He ran too slow and was shot twice in the abdomen and once in the chest. He fell on his face in the leaf-covered street a few doors down from his own home. His nephew was shot once in the shoulder and once in the elbow. The future son-in-law was unharmed.

  Neighbor Bob Tobasko, a UPS driver, told reporters he’d heard four or five shots, so rapid-fire that he thought an Uzi or machine gun of some kind was being used. He ran outside and saw a “guy lying on the ground . . . I was holding his hand, trying to comfort him a little,” the neighbor said. “When his son came out, he snapped out of it. He snapped out of it as soon as he saw his son’s face.” We’re not sure what he snapped out of or into, but Scopo was taken by ambulance to Jamaica Hospital where he died two hours later.

  In the aftermath of the shooting, eyewitnesses could not agree on how many gunmen there were. Some said two, others three. The getaway car, it was agreed, was a four-door, brown 1984 Buick LeSabre. The car was found to have been stolen from Brooklyn and was recovered only a few blocks from the Queens shooting scene.

  Did the Scopo hit indicate a resumption of inter-Colombo hostilities? Scopo had been a strong part of the Orena faction, so police looked to the Persico camp for suspects. Joseph Scopo was the former vice president of Local 6A of Cement and Concrete Workers in New York City. He and his brother Ralph Jr. were forced to give up their posts (as VP and President) of Local 6A, as well as officers of the District Council of Cement and Concrete Workers, after the U.S. Government proclaimed those unions to be “tools of organized crime” during the commission trial. With the Scopos out, a court-appointed trustee was placed in charge of the unions. The brothers were barred permanently from the unions. Now one was dead.

  A law enforcement official speaking anonymously to The New York Times said that the hit hurt the Orena team severely. The cop went on to say that Scopo was a big, burly, powerful man and, along with being with Orena, also had “close ties” to the Gambinos and their boss John Gotti.

  Twenty-one years would pass before it would be revealed in court that Carmine’s nephew, Teddy Boy Persico, ordered the hit in 1993 while on a prison furlough to attend his grandmother’s wake at Scarpaci Funeral Home in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn. He allegedly ordered the hit out of the earshot of corrections officers who had accompanied him to the wake, but within earshot of future rat Big Anthony Russo—no relation to Mush.

  According to Big Anthony, Teddy Boy said, “You have to go after Joey. To end this war, we got to get Joey. Joey is the target.” Russo said that forty-five-year-old Big Frank Guerra, his supposed best friend, whose day job was drug dealing, was in on the hit. Guerra, part owner of the Wanna Bagel shop in Bay Ridge where Matteo Speranza was killed, was a friend of Little Allie Boy and Teddy Boy Persico. Guerra’s name had previously come up in reference to Scopo’s murder in the 1999 trial of John Pappa, who is serving life for the Scopo hit. For a dozen years Guerra had been a suspect, but prosecutors felt they hadn’t enough evidence to convict. According to Big Anthony’s statements, Guerra was manning a crash car, his job was to obstruct pursuers of the getaway car. Those who knew Big Anthony thought it odd that he would cooperate with authorities, as he’d never been shy about his hatred for turncoats. It wasn’t until he was being held without bail that his lip unzipped. Big Anthony confessed that he was in a car involved in the Scopo hit, and that Frank Guerra was with him. Big Anthony claimed that he got out of the car while the shooting was going on and that his hat was shot right off his head. “I jumped out of the car. I was like a fucking mad hatter. I didn’t know what to do,” he said. Anthony said Big Frank was in the backseat of the car “laughing hysterical” at the murder. “What the fuck? Are you crazy?” Anthony quoted Frank as saying. At the time of Anthony’s initial cooperation, Big Frank was enjoying his freedom. He’d served more than six years on drug charges but had been out since 2006. Big Anthony once was recorded having a shit fit over rats, saying he wanted to chop the heads off of rats. Then he ratted himself. He was facing life. The power of RICO.

  * * *

  During the 1990s, leadership of the Colombos passed back and forth between Allie Boy and Mush, depending on who was in and out of jail. At one point, Mush did four and a half years for jury tampering.

  By this time, the Persicos had so much money that they didn’t need the rackets anymore. Had they chosen, they could have worked the stock market. They could have invested in real estate. That was the route some of their business partners over the years had taken. But the life was in the Persicos’ blood.

  In 1994, the Village Voice ran a story called “The Mob’s Big Wheels” in which they discussed a guy named John Staluppi and his connections with the Colombos. Staluppi bought up a great deal of Palm Beach County in Florida. When controversy followed him, Staluppi denied he was ever crooked. He once co-owned a few buildings with the Persicos. What’s the big deal? So what?

  You could be legit and work with the Persicos, but in the legit world you had to understand, you were going to have to live with the taint. Staluppi wanted to start a business helicoptering rich Manhattan degenerates to Atlantic City but was denied a license because, according to the Casino Control Commission, he was “a member” of the Colombo crime family. The CCC had evidence. An undercover agent got himself hired as Staluppi’s driver, discovered that he had Teddy Boy Persico’s and Vic Orena’s phone numbers in his little black book. Again, big fucking deal. He sold cars to Orena. Bought carpets with Teddy Boy. All this “family member” business was stereotyping, because he was Italian. Staluppi had to be protective of his precious reputation, perhaps why a reporter digging up dirt on Staluppi found himself being tailed. Staluppi was a Bensonhurst kid, vocational school dropout, nabbed for stealing many cars and reselling them with altered vehicle I.D. numbers. Ten years later he was making $2.5 million a year and owned twenty-nine used-car dealerships. Everybody told him he looked like Robert DeNiro.

  * * *

  On August 8, 1994, Little Allie Boy, now forty years old, was tried in Federal District Court in Brooklyn for Orena war murders. His defense attorney was young Barry Levin, not to be confused with the late Barry Levin of Southern California who got actor Robert Blake acquitted on murder charges. This Barry Levin specialized in white collar and RICO defenses. He was a 1984 grad of the University of Bridgeport Law School and because his specialty was a relatively new one, he immediately stepped into high-profile cases.

  The trial was one of thirty-six stemming from the Orena war. The prosecution was complex and confusing. Evidence was presented that seemed to indicate Allie Boy’s involvement in the 1985 killing of his brother-i
n-law Steven Piazza after Piazza was physically abusive to Allie Boy’s sister, but since that was in the indictment only as an underlying act for a racketeering count and not one of the charges being tried, there was nothing the jury could do about it. The trial lasted six weeks and the jury quickly acquitted Allie Boy.

  After the good news, Allie Boy told a reporter from The New York Times that the first thing he wanted to do was go home to Staten Island and see his girls. Allie Boy and Teresa had three daughters. And he may have done that, but before long he was in sunnier climes, doing a lousy job of laying low.

  Allie Boy moved by himself to Lighthouse Point, Florida, just north of Pompano Beach, where his new digs were perfect for a middle-aged man who’d had it with northeast winters and hassles—and marriage. The small city on the shore had a population of a little over 10,000 and was named after the beautiful Hillsboro Inlet lighthouse that sat on nearby Hillsboro Beach.

  He took to the waterfront lifestyle, bought a speedy yacht and called her “Lookin’ Good.” He was the captain and enjoyed zipping around, skimming across the waves with a salty spray speckling his shades. Broads were everywhere, sex-drenched symbols of Allie Boy’s ribald beneficence.

  Trouble was, he liked to drive that boat in a manner that attracted the attention of authorities, and when he did it, he also liked to have a small cache of weapons in the boat just in case he was attacked at sea.

  Within a year of moving to Florida, things went bad. Coast Guard officers raided his boat off the Florida Keys and found a Mossberg twelve-gauge shotgun and twenty shells, and a Browning. 380 semiautomatic handgun and fourteen rounds of .380 ammunition.

  He was promptly released on bail, walking free even as a federal grand jury handed up weapons charges in Fort Lauderdale. Both Law and Order were piling on. The case presented to the grand jury was the result of a joint investigation by the Coast Guard, FBI, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and the Key West Police Department.

  * * *

  At about the time Allie Boy was buying a boat and calling it “Lookin Good” he and his beautiful wife Teresa, known as Tori, were on the outs and living separate lives. The life, with its dangers and customs, made marriage complicated for many hoods. In this case, the marriage began to crack during Allie Boy’s incarceration. He had been in prison for years. They would divorce in February 1993, but were apart for a few years before that.

  Just because Allie Boy was in Florida’s salty spray and enjoying bachelorhood didn’t mean he wasn’t keeping tabs on his wife. He knew that Tori had a young boyfriend, twenty-eight-year-old Michael Devine, who was part owner of the popular Staten Island nightclub Hedges.

  The love affair ended when Devine was found, forehead on steering wheel, shot to death during the early morning hours of January 24, 1992, in his idling black Nissan Pathfinder in the garage of his condo apartment in the New Springfield section of Staten Island. The car radio was still on when the body was discovered at 8:30 A.M. Tellingly, the gunman had concentrated on only two parts of Devine’s body—head and crotch.

  The crime scene report read, “Genital mutilation.”

  No arrests, but—according to U.S. attorney George Stamboulidis—there existed audiotape of Allie Boy saying he “intended to take action” in regard to Devine. Allie Boy said that one of his friends had the color of Devine’s car. Devine, word was, had been warned to stay away from Tori, or else.

  Tori Persico took the stand once in the matter, in 2012, acknowledged that she was having an affair with Devine—the nightclub owner had swept her off her feet in August 1991—but denied vehemently that the affair made Allie Boy angry.

  “He didn’t object,” she testified.

  * * *

  It seemed Allie Boy’s problems could get no worse, but the authorities were indefatigable. On October 9, 1999, he happened to be back north when he learned he was again a wanted man. Attorney Barry Levin took his client home with him that night and he and Allie Boy had dinner at Levin’s apartment while they discussed strategy. Although Levin didn’t say it, Allie Boy was no doubt battling an urge to flee. Levin convinced him it was best if he turned himself in. With Levin, Allie Boy walked into the police station in Long Beach, Long Island. Levin explained to the desk sergeant that the U.S. government was looking for his client. The desk sergeant picked up the phone and FBI agents were there in a jiffy to take over. Allie Boy was held without bail on loan-sharking charges, based on evidence dating back as far as 1993. The police came with two warrants. One to arrest Allie Boy and the other to completely search his homes, both in New York and Florida.

  Allie Boy was also being charged with RICO violations, with being the head of the Colombo family, the same organization of which, the indictment read, his father had once been boss. When it was convenient for them, the feds were willing to admit that Carmine was no longer the actual boss.

  U.S. Magistrate Arlene Lindsay ordered that Allie Boy be transported by U.S. Marshals back down to South Florida to face the weapons charges involving his boat. Allie Boy was convicted on the weapons charges, fined $40,000, and sentenced to eighteen months, and three years of probation.

  Levin talked to reporters during an impromptu conference in a courthouse hallway.

  “They put away Gotti’s son, now they want to put away Persico’s son,” Levin said.

  Prosecutors said that at least some of their case was based on a surprise witness, which Persico and Levin correctly guessed was Chris Paciello, a Miami nightclub owner who at that time was being held on charges that he murdered a Staten Island housewife in 1993 and was ripe to deal. Paciello had made it to the fringes of show biz society by being business partners with a woman who was a close friend of the singer Madonna.

  Allie Boy didn’t know how much the government knew. All that had surfaced so far regarding Paciello was that he and Allie Boy ate lunch together in a Miami Beach restaurant. It wasn’t very impressive, but interesting in that it warranted a written police report.

  “What about Chris Paciello?” a reporter asked, referring to the prosecution’s so-called surprise witness.

  “He’s a playboy who’ll say and do anything to keep out of jail,” Levin said.

  Levin complained that the search warrants the feds had used were unreasonable, that they tore up Allie Boy’s family home and found zilch. “They took everything that’s not tied down,” the lawyer said.

  As for “zilch,” the authorities begged to differ. What they found, they said, was evidence of a criminal syndicate. Investigators discovered $25,000 in cash hidden in Allie Boy’s mattress, under the bed, and in a shoebox. Also found, in his briefcase, were loansharking records, fake I.D.s (Allie Boy’s picture but another name), and credit cards in the pseudonym. They also found documents regarding the prosecution of Colombos, and these, the government claimed, proved that Allie Boy was still involved in family business despite his move to Florida. In Allie Boy’s Park Slope apartment feds found a shoebox full of loan-sharking records, and a floppy disk under the stove that contained damning financial information, specifically info regarding the laundering of money that had been extorted from Embassy Terrace, a Gravesend catering hall.

  Apparently, the government didn’t have the restaurant bugged when Allie Boy and Paciello lunched. They didn’t know what was discussed. Barry Levin said the lunch was the only time his client was ever with Chris Paciello, so whatever Paciello had to say about the meeting was pure bullshit.

  The indictments, if proven to be true, included a glimpse of Allie Boy’s activities during the Persico-Orena war. The feds claimed that Allie Boy’s known war budget was $200,000. The money went to “body armor, hotel rooms, and safe houses.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Billy Fingers, Missing

  White Death came to William Cutolo, who took a meeting with Allie Boy Persico in Bay Ridge’s Cannonball Park and was never seen again.

  WHILE ALLIE BOY WAS SERVING his weapons sentence in Florida and his dad was away for good, the new Colombo u
nderboss was William “Billy Fingers” Cutolo. Like Vic Orena before him, Cutolo was ambitious and grew increasingly independent. He saw himself as a hero in the neighborhood. Hell, he played Santa at the children’s hospital every Christmas. Alternately known as “Wild Bill,” Cutolo was the picture of a 1950s mobster with duck’s ass hair and a tailored suit.

  Allie Boy’s Florida incarceration gave him time to think about Billy Fingers, who had been on the Orena side of the war and now chomped at the bit to rise another wrung on the ladder. We don’t know if Allie Boy actually came north to take care of business. He was out on bail but wasn’t supposed to leave Florida. Here’s what we do know:

  On May 26, 1999, Mrs. Marguerite Cutolo called police to report her husband missing. He’d gone to John Paul Jones Park at Fourth Avenue and 101st Street at the southern tip of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, known as Cannonball Park to the locals because of the huge Rodman Gun and stacked cannonballs that provide its objet d’art. Cutolo went to the park for a meeting, he said, with Allie Boy Persico and did not return home.

  According to a 2007 U.S. Attorney’s Office press release, Cutolo may have been expecting to meet with Allie Boy in person, but when he got to the park he encountered Colombo guns Thomas Gioeli, Dino Calabro, and Dino Saracino. They abducted him, took him to Saracino’s apartment and there murdered him. They drove his body out to Long Island and buried it.