Because of flaws in the prosecution’s case against Carmine in the old commission case, Mari was seeking to have his client’s sentence changed to time served. Thirty-two years. By just about anyone’s standards, it was plenty.
The commission case prosecution, Mari said, had told the jury that they had five informants upon whose reports they were basing their claims that Carmine was the head of the Colombo family, ruling from behind bars, when in reality they only had one source, which was revealed by FBI documents to be Greg Scarpa. It had been kept secret until now. They exaggerated their own case, one that attempted to demonstrate that Carmine was the “official boss.”
Carmine, the lawyer said, was concerned that a book coming out at that time might raise his personal profile with the public just when he wanted to keep his name quiet. Benson told the lawyer that the book wasn’t coming out for a year and a half, at least, and that made Mari happy.
Mari said that Carmine, for the record, denied having anything to do with organized crime in the last thirty-two years that he’d been in prison.
* * *
All that is left for Carmine are memories of a mythic life, a life that has left a massive footprint on the world it stomped, a sprawling epic poem of violence. Some scenes from his life have appeared in works of high art, others were his and his alone: running clear the fuck across Brooklyn after the shots in the park, the Blue Beetle’s head almost hitting the roof, the sound of brothers in their camaraderie, the smell of smoke-filled rooms, the sound of ice cracking in a glass of whiskey, wandering around the precinct in a zoot suit, Crazy Joey’s lion in Mondo’s basement, wafting Brilliantine and Wildroot and gunpowder in Grasso’s barber shop, how beautiful his wife looked on their wedding night, running across Utica Avenue outside the Sahara Lounge; busting ankles in the daytime, watching Lenny Montana grapple for a tag team belt at night, broads, broads, and more broads, show girls, dancers, future movie stars, the time he asked for an ear but got a finger, the rural life, a farmhouse in beautiful country so far from the Gowanus, DeChristopher, a rat, Cowboy Mike, a rat, tough lessons, Andy Mush, Lang, Scappi, Apples, guys you want to go to war with, and did from the time they were kids, true blue—and Greg Scarpa informing to the FBI during the day, and icing guys at night—for thirty-five years! What a bunch of characters. It was true. La vita è un sogno. Life is a fucking dream.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
Benson, Michael. Inside Secret Societies. New York: Citadel Press, 2005.
Bernstein, Lee. Greatest Menace: Organized Crime in Cold War America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009.
Carpenter, Teresa. Mob Girl. New York: Zebra, 1993.
DeStefano, Anthony M. The Big Heist: The Real Story of the Lufthansa Heist, the Mafia, and Murder. New York: Citadel Press, 2017.
DiMatteo, Frank. The President Street Boys: Growing Up Mafia. New York: Kensington True Crime, 2016.
Glasser, Abraham. “Persico (Carmine) v. U.S., Transcript of Record with Supporting Pleadings.” U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978, MOML Print Edition, 2017.
McShane, Larry. Chin. New York: Pinnacle Books, 2016.
Manbeck, John B., ed. The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
Mazza, Larry. The Life: A True Story About a Brooklyn Boy Seduced into the Dark World of the Mafia. Amazon Digital Services, 2016.
Polisi, Sal, and Steve Dougherty. The Sinatra Club. New York: Pocket Books, 2012.
Raab, Selwyn. Five Families. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2005.
Red Hook: A Plan for Community Regeneration. Brooklyn: Community Board 6, 1994.
Riccio, Vincent, and Bill Slocum. All the Way Down: The Violent Underworld of Street Gangs. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962.
Robinson, Paul H., and Michael T. Cahill. Law Without Justice: Why Criminal Law Doesn’t Give People What They Deserve. London: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Sanchez, Tony. Red Hook Neighborhood Profile. Brooklyn: Brooklyn in Touch Information Center, Inc., 1986.
Weld, Ralph Foster. Brooklyn in America. New York: AMS Press, 1967.
Whalen, Bernard J., Philip Messing, and Robert Mladinich. Undisclosed Files of the Police: Cases from the Archives of the NYPD from 1831 to the present. New York: Black Dog and Levanthal Publishers, 2016.
NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Brooklyn World-Telegram
Chicago Tribune
Cincinnati Enquirer
Cortland Standard
Eau Claire Leader
Elmira Star-Gazette
Fort Myers News Press
Hartford Courant
Lansing State Journal
Long Island Star-Journal
Los Angeles Times
Newsday
New York magazine
New York Daily News
New York Post
New York Sun
The New York Times
New York World-Telegram
Orlando Sentinel
Palm Beach Post
Philadelphia Daily News
Philadelphia Inquirer
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Pittsburgh Press
Poughkeepsie Journal
Rochester Democrat and
Chronicle
St. Louis Star and Times
Santa Cruz Sentinel
South Florida Sun Sentinel
Syracuse Post-Standard
Time
Troy Times Record
Village Voice
WEBSITES
www.cosanostranews.com
www.beatsboxingmayhem.com
www.fbi.gov
www.gangstersinc.org
www.huffingtonpost.com
www.silive.com
The Red Hook section of Brooklyn during the 1950s, where men had two choices: work on the piers or go into the life. The Gowanus Canal can be seen cutting through left to right. That’s Governor’s Island on the left, Manhattan on the right, New Jersey at the top. Drawn line indicates proposed path of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, the entrance to which would further cut off Red Hook from the rest of the borough.
(Brooklyn Eagle photograph, Brooklyn Collection, Brooklyn Public Library)
Fifth Avenue and Garfield Place, Ground Zero for Carmine’s first gang, the Garfield Boys—and also the corner where ill-fated jockey Albert Grillo used a nightstick on a cop during the raid of a friendly corner crap game.
(Author photo)
When Carmine’s mom was a pregnant lady with a shiner, she and Carmine’s dad brawled above this garage on Eighth Street, on a block that’s a mix of houses and warehouses. By the time the kids came, they’d moved to better digs.
(Author photo)
The Persico boys really were better off than a lot of the street hoods they hung out with. Dad was a legal stenographer and they lived in this beautiful building on a different part of Carroll Street, on a steep portion of the aptly named Park Slope.
(Author photo)
The Prospect Park Boathouse, scene of the famous and deadly rumble between Carmine’s Garfield Boys and their rivals, the Tigers. Since 1972, it has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and in 1993 was the setting for a scene in a Martin Scorsese picture,
The Age of Innocence. (Author photo)
James Fortunato represented the Tigers at the great Prospect Park rumble of 1950. When his crew and the Garfield Boys scattered, he was left behind, dying with two bullets in his belly.
(Brooklyn Eagle photograph, Brooklyn Collection, Brooklyn Public Library)
The morning following the Prospect Park rumble, the Brooklyn Eagle splashed the news across its front page in a type-size usually reserved for V-J Day or FDR’s death.
(Brooklyn Eagle photograph, Brooklyn Collection, Brooklyn Public Library)
After Fortunato’s death, cops sought to return to the fistfight era and called for the Garfields to turn in their weapons. Guys who were turning in thei
r slingshots and clubs had probably just built a zip gun in shop class.
(Brooklyn Eagle photograph, Brooklyn Collection, Brooklyn Public Library)
Carmine Persico at age seventeen, under arrest for the murder of Steve Bove, and being questioned by Assistant District Attorney Louis Andreozzi.
(Brooklyn Eagle photograph, Brooklyn Collection, Brooklyn Public Library)
The Red Hook saloon where Steve Bove drank his last.
(Author photo)
The gutter where Alphonse left Steve Bove’s dead ass after shooting him repeatedly in the backseat of Albert Grillo’s car. This is how it looks today. It didn’t look any better back then.
(Author photo)
In 1952, six guys running numbers for Frankie Shots’ policy bank were rounded up and taken to the police precinct where they turned camera shy when a photographer from the press appeared. Carmine was caught peeking.
(Brooklyn Eagle photograph, Brooklyn Collection, Brooklyn Public Library)
On July 28, 1959, Carmine Persico and his crew hijacked a truck with $50,000 worth of piece goods in it, from this location, the Akers Motor Lines Terminal, hard against the Gowanus Canal. That hijacking would plague Carmine for the rest of his life.
(Author photo)
Giuseppe “Joe” Profaci, largest distributor of olive oil and tomato sauce in the U.S., and already a very rich man when he branched out into organized crime. It was Profaci who pulled Carmine out of Frankie Shots’ crew before it was too late, Profaci who made Carmine.
(Brooklyn Eagle photograph, Brooklyn Collection, Brooklyn Public Library)
The Olive Oil King’s mausoleum in St. John Cemetery, Queens. The woman with flowers in her hair holds a cross and a skull.
(Author photos)
Carmine made his bones when he whacked this man, Albert Anastasia, who was in a barber chair in a hotel shop. The hit was big because Anastasia was big, controller of the waterfront and Lord High Executioner of Murder, Inc.
(Brooklyn Eagle photograph, Brooklyn Collection, Brooklyn Public Library)
Abbatemarco was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. His grave features a statue reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Pietà. The small print reads: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.”
(Author photo)
Carmine’s attempt onLarry Gallo’s life was unsuccessful and Larry died of natural causes. Brother Joey was not as lucky, and died in a hail of bullets. Both are buried in Green-Wood cemetery.
(Author photo)
In 1999, William Cutolo was called to a meeting with Allie Boy Persico at this spot, John Paul Jones Park in Brooklyn, commonly known around Fort Hamilton as Cannonball Park, for obvious reasons. Cutolo never returned home.
(Author photo)
Only days after Cutolo’s disappearance, union pension administrator Kathleen Joseph refused to turn over the $50 million fund to the mobsters, earning her a personal visit from this man, cousin Frank Persico.
(Courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Carmine’s son, Little Allie Boy. Just like his namesake uncle, this Alphonse figures to die in prison.
(Courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Carmine Persico will be remembered for the swath of destruction he left behind, a street kid who started out beating up children for their lunch money, and who carried that same “born to extort” manner into adulthood, where he accrued fantastic wealth and power but lost his freedom.
(Courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
This Green-Wood mausoleum holds the remains of Carmine’s dad, Carmine Persico, Sr. (1909–1976), his mother, Susan (1911–1989), brothers Alphonse (1929–1989) and Theodore (1937–2017), Carmine’s mother-in-law, Gertrude “Lubilee” Smaldone (1911–2002), and nephew Daniel (1962–2016). One day it will hold the remains of Carmine Persico Jr.
(Author photo)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge the following persons and organizations without whose help this book could not have been written: Lisa, Tekla and Matthew Benson; the Brooklyn Historical Society; cover designer Barbara Brown; Deputy Commissioner Stephen Davis at the New York Police Department’s public information office; author Anthony DeStefano; our literary agent Elise Erickson of Harold Ober Associates; editor extraordinaire Gary Goldstein; Holy Cross Cemetery in East Flatbush; Senior Librarian Alla Roylance at the Brooklyn Collection department of the Brooklyn Public Library; attorney Matthew J. Mari; Robert Mladinich; Julie May and Megan Westman at the Othmer Library & Archives of the Brooklyn Historical Society; Kelly McAnnaney at the National Archives in New York City; private investigator Donald A. Tubman; and Samantha Ward at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York.
And Emily, Chris, Krissy, Matthew, and Frankie Boy.
And to the others, who wished to remain anonymous, our heartfelt thanks.
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