Carmine the Snake

by Frank DiMatteo

  A reporter asked a mourner about the family’s criminal reputation.

  “There’s nobody left,” the guy said. No more murders. “The old guys are too old and too tired.”

  * * *

  Carmine’s brother Theodore, Big Teddy Boy, was the Persico brother who’d drawn the least publicity. His brothers were bosses, but Teddy remained a capo, and once a member of a “ruling committee.” He “only” spent twenty-two years in prison, mostly for his participation in the Persico-Orena War. The last six of those years were spent in a medical facility because of his failing health. He was arrested outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1993 on Palm Sunday, and was released in 2013. After two months in a Brooklyn halfway house, Teddy Boy returned home to Valley Stream, Long Island, where he had been staying out of trouble. He passed away at age seventy-nine on February 22, 2017, in Brooklyn, leaving Carmine as the sole living member of the Carroll Street Persico brothers. He was interred in the Persico family mausoleum in Green-Wood Cemetery.

  On Teddy Boy’s internet obituary page, one mourner wrote simply, “He was a good earner.”

  EPILOGUE

  La vita è un sogno

  Carmine John Persico Jr. is now both myth and man. In legend, he remains the leader of a gang, just what he wanted to be when he was thirteen and laying his precocious rap on the elders of the Garfield Boys. In reality, power has faded into nostalgia.

  SINCE 2005, CARMINE has been an inmate at Butner Medium I Federal Correctional Institute in North Carolina, a medical facility, perhaps even cushier than his California digs. Butner was known as “Camp Fluffy” because of its comforts. Now in his eighties, Carmine enjoyed a fenced-in one-acre courtyard with a rec room. He could shoot pool, lift weights, or play basketball, or perspire under a towel in the “sweat lodge,” although his lungs were bad from smoking and he was more prone to playing Pinochle and bocce. Carmine’s room had a window without bars and a cell door that wasn’t locked at night. He had access to a computer and a kitchen where he could cook.

  The medical condition that got Carmine transferred was a mystery. Maybe respiratory, but not necessarily. His lawyer Linda Sheffield would only say it was nothing life-threatening.

  At Butner, all of the units were named for colleges that played in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Carmine lived in the Georgia Tech Unit, where he was known for his skill at games, but often appeared lonely, homesick for the old days.

  Other inmates, the source said, always showed Carmine the appropriate respect, and were eager to do him favors and be on his good side. Carmine could always get extra food or specially prepared meals. All he had to do was say the word.

  Carmine was like a business school professor dishing out the wisdom. He liked to tell a story about something an old-time mobster told him when he was just a kid, still on his way up. The advice was, if you go into a business, take over every aspect of it. If you want to run a carpet-cleaning company, for example, don’t just provide the cleaning service, but control the people who sell the carpets, supply the carpets, and determine when the carpets need to be cleaned. You take what might have earned you a decent living, and you turn it into something that can draw $1 million per year and go on for decades.

  * * *

  In 2007 a document was made public in a Brooklyn courtroom that stated that, back in 1987, there’ d been a vote by the leaders of the five families on whether to hit Rudolph Giuliani, who at the time was a U.S. Attorney at war with the mob. The memo was written by the former FBI special agent Roy Lindley DeVecchio, and read during his trial on charges that he helped Greg Scarpa Sr. commit four murders in the 1980s and ’90s. DeVecchio was also accused of giving Scarpa the heads-up on impending arrests so those sought could take evasive action.

  Giuliani as we know came within one vote of being snuffed. The memo read, “On September 17, 1987, source advised that recent information disclosed that approximately a year ago all five New York La Cosa Nostra families discussed the idea of killing U.S. Attorney Giuliani, and John Gotti and Carmine Persico were in favor of the hit. The bosses of the Lucchese and Bonnano and Genovese families rejected the idea, despite strong efforts to convince them otherwise by Gotti and Persico.”

  The motion to off Giuliani was exceptional for the American mob. Though it was true that the Sicilian Mafia eliminated troublesome cops and “magistrates,” here in the U.S. the wisdom said hitting government officials was counterproductive. Obviously politicians were once in a while offed, mostly when they were double-crossing sons of bitches, but modern mobsters thought of their families as businesses first. Violence that was bad for business was frowned upon. Of course, it happened. Dallas was crawling with pissed-off gangsters the day JFK was assassinated, and racket-buster Thomas Dewey was a target when running for governor of New York State.

  But not this time.

  Is the memo correct? That’s another question. Does the tale pass the smell test? I could imagine Carmine wanting to hit Giuliani—and info supplied by Carmine’s prison pal Cowboy Mike corroborated this assertion—John Gotti on the other hand was not inclined to agree with anything Persico said, and had no history of violence against authorities.

  “One vote I won,” Giuliani quipped on a morning radio program. Gotti died in 2002, and Carmine had been away for thirty years, so Giuliani figured he’d had the last laugh.

  * * *

  In 2011, the New York Post’s Brad Hamilton wrote an expose revealing the diminished state of the Colombo family, then in its eighty-third year, hardly recognizable as the same operation that once had a reputation as the most bloodthirsty of the families. Cousin Andy Mush Russo was said to have been “acting boss” of the remaining Colombos in 2010. The job at that point was to prevent desertion, and try to get back those who’d recently deserted. He tried a “come back to the fold, or else” command. The word on the street was that stray hoods who failed to return would be placed on a hit list, which would then be distributed to the other four families. On January 20, 2011, Mush was busted again—with consigliere Richard Fusco and underboss Benjamin Castellazzo, charged with murder, narcotics trafficking, and labor racketeering. In 2013, Mush went away again, two and a half years for racketeering.

  * * *

  Although the Colombos were hurting, law enforcement was not letting up and continued using wiretaps and wired informants to chip away. Recently they’d used two small-time hoods to gather info, brothers-in-law, Tommy McLaughlin and Peter Tagliavia, survivors of the Persico-Orena war who’d done time and kept their mouths shut. But now they wore a wire to record the conversations of their bosses.

  Frankie “Blue Eyes” Sparaco ratted on the “upper echelon.” Sparaco’s info brought down street boss Thomas “Tommy Shots” Gioeli in 2010 for murder and racketeering.

  On January 20, 2011, the feds launched the largest one-day arrest of gangsters in history. While McLaughlin and Tagliavia began new lives as new people, thirty-four members of the Colombo family were arrested, including underboss Benjamin “The Claw” Castellazzo and consigliere Richard “Ritchie Nerves” Fusco. Also arrested that year were Carmine’s nephew Carmine, for extortion. While awaiting trial, he was under house arrest, wearing an ankle bracelet, and needed a special order from a judge to go to his girlfriend’s house for Thanksgiving dinner.

  Carmine must’ve felt a little lost. When they took Mush, they further lengthened the already vast distance between Junior and the gang he was supposed to be leading. The old traditions were gone. The boys no longer controlled the judges, the politicians. They no longer dirtied themselves with murder before they were made. You had button guys, all they did was earn. They wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  The feds, those bastards, had the nerve to say that their unknown sources were two made guys. Not just soldiers either. Ca-poregimes. Hothead hoods were left to guess who they might be.

  The FBI predicted there would be multiple killings. “I’ve heard that people are looking to retaliate,” an anonymous fed said, the bloodthirsty bastard. “T
hat Colombo leadership is a dangerous bunch. They are reckless killers. Sometimes it doesn’t take much for them to decide someone has to go. With Mush gone, they’re rudderless. No one knows who will take over. There’s no one left.”

  * * *

  At a bail hearing for Mush Russo, actor James Caan, Mush’s goombah since pre-production for The Godfather, wrote the judge a letter of support. The letter, made public at trial, pointed out that Mush was seventy-six. No spring chicken. Caan wrote that he and Mush went back thirty-five years, and “I’ve known him only as an unbelievable father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and as good a friend as anyone could be to me and my family. Our two families are intertwined. My son Scott is his godson. He has always been the first to call when any member of my family has been ill or troubled, and always looked after me like a brother. I’d be willing to put up anything of personal value that the court would accept. I would not hesitate a moment to fly in and be present if the court should so request. In short, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to see this man where he belongs and where he is needed the most—with his family.”

  Also supporting Mush was actor Federico Castelluccio who played a hit man on The Sopranos. He said he was a painter and Mush a sculptor. Their friendship was based on their common love of art. For the hearing, the gallery behind Mush was packed, standing room only, largely with a group of hearing-impaired people. One member of that group explained that Mush, still the hater of bullies that my mom remembered from seventy years earlier, had come to the defense of a group of deaf children who were being picked on in her neighborhood. Despite the support, Judge Cheryl Pollak denied bail.

  In September 2011, after fifty years in the life without taking a bullet, Mush was shot five times in the back by rubber bullets fired by a guard at the Brooklyn House of Detention for Men on Atlantic Avenue. Officials said it was an accident. Mush was apparently on the phone when the same earthquake that cracked the Washington Monument rumbled the jail, jolting one guard into a trigger-happy anti-riot mode. Mush was the only one hit.

  * * *

  Despite the decimated nature of the organization—Colombo active members were cut by more than half in five years—some remained stubbornly convinced that Carmine still called the shots. But who was left on the outside? To whom did he give his orders? His family members were either in prison or out of the life. As few as forty Colombos remained free, it was estimated. The family was in danger of extinction. The Colombos were now smaller and less powerful than the DeCavalcantes of New Jersey (made famous by the TV show The Sopranos). One law enforcement source said the clan had done it to itself.

  Carmine’s family was the family of great civil wars, Profaci-Gallo, Colombo-Gallo, Persico-Orena. The last war had done the most damage. Regarding the after-effects of the Orena war, Brooklyn D.A. Michael Vecchione, who often prosecuted cases against the Colombos, said that they never recovered.

  Vecchione explained, “There have been factions in other families, but nothing to this extent. The number of murders and the mayhem was unprecedented.” Now there was talk of divvying up what was left of the Colombos and splitting it between the four remaining families. The Colombos still had assets. They had influence in several unions. It was alleged that there was also considerable loan-sharking going on, valuable captains were still active.

  * * *

  By 2016, Carmine’s health was failing. He’d served more than thirty years, the only defendant from the commission trial still behind bars. In a motion presented to the court in 2016, Carmine’s legal team gave details regarding the old man’s slumping health. He needed a wheelchair to get around now because of his emphysema. He was almost blind, had only limited use of his arms. How dangerous could he be? He had spent the great bulk of his years behind bars, how could you punish him any more than you had already?

  The same memo to the court addressed the issue of long-concealed FBI files recovered by Carmine’s lawyers through a Freedom of Information Act request. According to Persico attorney Anthony DiPietro, those files revealed that Carmine Persico was convicted of a crime he did not commit. Persico’s one-hundred-year sentence was based on what DiPietro could demonstrate were false allegations. The memo asked Manhattan Federal Court Judge Kevin Duffy for a status conference.

  The FBI files acquired through a 2015 request bolstered a case for sentence relief, the lawyer said, a case already hefty with the exposure of “troubling issues” regarding Carmine’s commission trial conviction.

  DiPietro’s argument was that Carmine Persico was not yet a boss in 1979 and thus could not have conspired with the other mob bosses to commit murder as the government alleged.

  Another weak point in the feds’ case, a case for which Carmine had spent three decades away, was the fact that they had “illegal and unethical contracts” with the rats who testified against Carmine.

  Two memos in particular demonstrated this point, one indicating that “Junior” had been among those voting on whether or not to hit Galante, and another that said Carmine became boss of the Colombos immediately following the mortal wounding of Joe Colombo. Carmine categorically denied both allegations.

  DiPietro asked for a “just and timely review,” reiterating that Carmine’s health problems gave his request urgency. It wouldn’t be the first time the court had pity on an old, sick mobster. In 2014, Lucchese consigliere Christopher “Christy Tick” Furnari was released after serving twenty-eight years of his century-long sentence in the commission case. On June 23, 2017, Colombo underboss John “Sonny” Franzese was released from Federal prison at age one hundred. He had been the oldest federal prisoner, and left the Federal Medical Center in Devens, Massachusetts, in a wheelchair. Franzese is expected to quietly live out his remaining days in his Greenpoint, Brooklyn, home with his loving family. Interestingly, Franzese had only been in the pen for eight years, as he was convicted at age ninety-two of shaking down a couple of Manhattan strip joints.

  * * *

  Carmine’s battles in recent years have been modest. He recently fought for and won the best seat in the prison dining room, a corner chair with a window that overlooked the prison complex. There he schmoozes with the world’s number-one white-collar criminal, Bernie Madoff, pats his round belly, and says, “Il dolce far niente.”

  Details of Carmine and Madoff’s relationship came from journalist Steve Fishman, a longtime hoofer of the Bernie Madoff beat. Carmine served as the welcoming committee when Madoff arrived at the penitentiary to begin his 150-year sentence. Carmine gifted history’s worst white-collar criminal with shower shoes and taught him the ropes. The two, Fishman said, became fast friends. They were about the same age, Madoff three years younger, and Carmine knew from experience that Madoff’s notoriety as “$65 Billion Ponzi Supernova,” fleecer of NASDAQ, would make assimilation into prison society complicated—challenging. (Madoff offered to “keep the prison books,” but was turned down.)

  Sure enough, Madoff committed several prison faux pas during his early days in Butner. He wanted to watch a news feature about himself on CBS and broke the prison rules by changing the channel in the TV room. It also ticked off one prisoner who was watching another show. A childish argument ensued, there was a “scuffle,” and Madoff was slapped hard across the face. It was Carmine to the rescue. Not in person. He sent over a couple of guys. The inmate who slapped Madoff was “spoken to” and received a “stern warning.” Hands off Madoff.

  Since then, Fishman said, Bernie calls his fellow inmates “colleagues” and watches any channel he wants in the TV room. To Fishman, Madoff described Carmine as a “very sweet man” and a “good buddy.” He admitted to being jealous of Carmine, who received many visits from family members, including his grandkids with whom he was always so loving and gentle. Madoff seldom received visitors. He was on the outs with his family. One of his sons committed suicide in the teeth of the financial scandal Bernie caused.

  Madoff, it was said, was not cliquish despite his friendship with Carmine. He didn’t hang ar
ound with just mobsters. He moved from social group to social group, probably for business reasons, as he has concentrated on money-making angles in prison. That’s what he does. Madoff at one point bought the prison’s entire supply of hot chocolate and sold it for a profit.

  * * *

  Estimating the net worth of a mobster can be difficult, maybe impossible to do with any precision. Yet those who do that sort of thing have said Carmine’s estate may have broken the $1 billion mark—a remarkable achievement for a high school dropout from Park Slope, regardless of how the fortune was accrued. One website listed Carmine as the fourth richest mobster of all time, surpassed only by the wealth of Carmine Galante, Santo Trafficante Jr., and Al Capone.

  Not that he has much to spend money on. The aged Carmine Persico sitting in his cell like Buddha reminds me of what Joe Valachi said about him many years ago. The man who introduced the phrase La Cosa Nostra to the American people, said that Carmine was a street guy, at his best on the street, at his best outside. Those words have become a sad irony for a man who has spent the last half of his life indoors.

  Carmine Persico remained the spiritual boss, the indisputable leader of the gang—even if that gang was just a ragtag assemblage of federal inmates. He was born into a world of options and chose to be Top Cat, alpha male, leader of the pack, a position he still holds in his Federal prison dining room.

  * * *

  When this book was still in the discussion stage, co-author Michael Benson wrote letters to Carmine and Allie Boy in prison. Allie Boy, now sixty-two, lived in the United States Penitentiary near Coleman, Florida. Benson also wrote to their attorney Matthew J. Mari, informing them that a book was in the works and asking if anyone had any concerns. Benson also requested that any family members who might be willing to help with the telling of Carmine’s story make their availability known.

  On March 9, 2017, Mari called Benson. He did have a concern. Mari said that Carmine Persico was a “level-headed eighty-three-year-old man. He understood the public interest in the story of his life” but there were concerns nonetheless. This was a sensitive time and there were legal battles brewing. Carmine wanted to make it clear, he was no longer head of the family and hadn’t been for many years. People thought he ran the family from behind bars but it wasn’t true. A figurehead, maybe. A symbol. A man who commanded much respect because of his past, yes. But an actual boss calling shots? No.