Carmine the Snake

by Frank DiMatteo

  Of Carmine’s two simultaneous trials, the Colombo case—the one in which he used a real lawyer—ended first, as expected with a conviction. Also convicted in the case was Carmine’s son Alphonse, who received twelve years. Marcu called Little Allie Boy “his father’s trusted lieutenant, the future of the Colombo family.” Lieutenant, in this case, was equivalent to captain, or capo.

  At Carmine’s sentencing hearing in the Colombo trial, Judge Keenan praised Carmine’s performance as his own lawyer in the commission trial. As the trials were being held in the same courthouse, he’d sat in the gallery as a spectator for part of that trial. He then called Carmine a “tragedy.”

  “You are one of the most intelligent men I have ever seen in my life,” Judge Keenan said. He then sentenced Carmine to thirty-nine years.

  So Carmine’s arrests and legal history culminated with his June 14, 1986, conviction for racketeering, extortion, etc. He has been incarcerated ever since. All that followed was the government thumping its puffed-out federal chest.

  In November 1986, cousin Mush Russo was sentenced to fourteen years. He got out after serving eight, and was free for four years before going down again in 1999, for jury tampering and parole violation.

  * * *

  When both of Carmine’s trials were finished, Rudy Giuliani was asked if Carmine was just going to run the Colombos from prison as he reportedly had in the past. Giuliani said no. Carmine had already appointed an acting boss and was “unlikely to retain power.”

  (And this, of course, is precisely what Carmine says happened. Just because some hopped-up torpedo said, “This is for Carmine!” when he hit somebody, didn’t mean it was really for Carmine. The shooters were having a moment, glorying in the power of the Persico name. It was like taking an oath.)

  With Carmine away for good, law enforcement let out a collective sigh of relief. They’d always had a feeling that Carmine was different, that killing wasn’t just a matter of business for him, but a basic component of his problem-solving. Obstacles were to be removed, regardless of whether or not they were human. Alan Cohen, former chief of the organized crime unit under U.S. Attorney Giuliani, once said that if we removed the context of organized crime from Carmine’s resumé, what remained would reveal him to be a psychopathic mass murderer.

  To rub Carmine’s nose in it, Judge Keenan specified that his sentence at the Colombo trial and the one from the commission trial were to be served back-to-back. Since the feds had no parole, if by some miracle Carmine survived the thirty-nine years, he would be ninety-two by the time he served it all, and would still have one-hundred years to go.

  Carmine’s wife Joyce was normally a very private woman, but following her Carmine’s twin convictions she became bitter, angry, and fumed in public: “I know the kind of man he is. The love that Carmine and I have for our family and our home has helped us through the years of excessive punishment the government had inflicted upon us. We survived the ordeal, Carmine came home, and just when we thought it was safe to resume our lives again, along came RICO and Giuliani.”

  All of the prosecutors that put Carmine away made hay out of their success, but the spearhead of the investigation and prosecution, Rudy Giuliani, made by far the most—enough to fill a silo. He became New York City mayor, a national figure in the wake of 9/11, and an aspirant to the U.S. presidency.

  Michael Chertoff parlayed his success into a position in the George Bush administration as assistant attorney general overseeing the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. When informed of Chertoff’s success in the Bush administration, Fat Tony Salerno, on his last legs, said, “He owes me a thank-you note.”

  * * *

  The commission case defendants had waived their right to appeal their conviction on grounds of incompetent counsel, but there were plenty of other reasons to appeal—alleged prosecutorial misconduct, for example, desperation being first and foremost. Carmine, still working pro se, i.e., on his own behalf, filed an appeal for a rehearing on February 18, 1987. His primary argument was that RICO laws were unconstitutional. In court, RICO gave the prosecution a handful of cards it didn’t deserve: immaterial evidence, illegal surveillance, etc. Trouble was, RICO was the law of the land. Lawyers objected that defendants who were charged with varying crimes should be tried together. The RICO laws, however, established that they could be tried together because they shared identical “patterns of crimes.” The appeals process revealed only minor glitches in the Chertoff case, but nothing to overturn a verdict. The appellate court did say that evidence linking Persico, Salerno, and Corallo, to the murder of Carmine Galante was largely based on “speculation and inference.” Other than that, the conviction was good.

  Carmine’s address on the paperwork was the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a federal facility commonly referred to as MCC, 150 Park Row in Manhattan. For a time, Carmine was mostly concerned with being allowed to stay at MCC until the appellate process had run its course, rather than being sent to an out-of-town penitentiary. Not that MCC was nice. It was dank and overcrowded. Its nickname was “New York Guantanamo.” But Carmine wrote that he wanted to stay close to his friends and family during this difficult time. Carmine’s request was denied and he was shipped to the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, the very pen Carmine had reportedly complained to Fred DeChristopher about, the pen where it was “hard to do business.”

  Salerno (1992) and Corallo (2000) died behind bars, and the appeals, one by one, ran out for Carmine Persico.

  * * *

  The FBI had come a long way since the days when mob-controlled jockeys (including the Blue Beetle, no doubt) fixed races so J. Edgar Hoover could win at Santa Anita, and Hoover denied the Mafia’s existence. In 1972, when Hoover died, Federal agents began to investigate organized crime for the first time since the Kennedy administration, especially in New York. At first the feds were happy creating stats that demonstrated they were on the job. They counted the number of arrests, without factoring in the success of the subsequent prosecutions. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the FBI really went to war with the mob.

  The Federal Government, armed with RICO, was hell bent on systematically destroying the Italian version of organized crime. As we know, the WASP version was going batshit and stealing billions, but investigating and prosecuting it was dangerous and not sexy.

  The convictions already achieved by the feds were not enough to put the mob out of business, but they had a tremendous impact. William Doran, the FBI criminal division chief in New York, said that Carmine’s removal from the streets created a “power vacuum.” Shakeups would follow and offer cops opportunities to put undercover operations in motion. The question was, would the power void increase or decrease violence? Without someone like Carmine Persico at the top making the decisions—clear-headed, even-keel decisions—hoods might think with their guns instead of their heads. One effect was certain: mob leaders were no longer going to seek publicity and flaunt their mob power. John Gotti was boss for about three heartbeats before he was indicted. He might have earned the nickname “The Teflon Don” but they would get him. The best way to beat RICO was to keep your name off the list all together, so new methods of running rackets in secret were bound to be invented. Lower profiles would become the norm, Doran predicted.

  ACT III

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Cowboy Mike

  What do you catch when the rat baits the trap? Carmine Persico was a savvy guy with strong social skills, but he was not perfect. As had been the case with Fred DeChristopher, his flaw was his tendency to trust.

  ONE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE Carmine met upon his return to Marion was thirty-eight-year-old Michael “Cowboy Mike” Lloyd, from Metuchen, New Jersey, a former rodeo bronco- and bull-rider, a small-time crook who’d gotten repeatedly busted until he was doing twenty years. He had been convicted of interstate cattle rustling, a federal crime, but he’d also been popped for bank robbery and counterfeiting. He once escaped from jail using a toy gun. He was first incarcer
ated at age twelve after he stole a luxury car to escape reform school. He was a relaxed man’s-man kind of guy and had, while locked up, proven himself skilled at getting favors from his goodtime buddy corrections officers.

  When Cowboy Mike and Carmine met, Mike brought the celebrated gangster a few gifts: a toothbrush, soap, and a pack of cigarettes (Pall Malls, biggest bang for your buck).

  Carmine liked this guy, and they started to chat, a conversation that went on for months. One day the subject turned to the assholes that had taken Carmine’s freedom, and his plans to get revenge. The stories gave the cowboy an idea.

  In 1988, Lloyd wrote a letter to Carmine’s arch-enemy Rudy Giuliani. He said that he’d been talking to Persico and was privy to a plot to kill Giuliani and Colombo-case prosecutor Aaron Marcu. Lloyd reported that Carmine’s men had found Giuliani’s security daunting, and Marcu the easier target. The racket-busting bastard was being followed already and the hit could come at any time. Lloyd quoted Carmine as saying, “The one thing I wish is I could be there, see his face when they do it, I’d slap him, let him know what’s gonna happen.” Lloyd said Carmine had said lots of things, and that he, Lloyd, was willing to share that information. He’d served almost half of his term, had a parole hearing coming up in a while, and hoped to return to his wife and kid. He’d gotten his GED in prison and was ready to go straight.

  After the plot to kill Marcu was verified and Marcu’s security beefed up, Giuliani asked Lloyd if he was willing to take a polygraph. Cowboy Mike said bring it on. He passed, and Giuliani’s chief organized crime prosecutor was sent to Marion to question him.

  As it turned out, Lloyd not only gave the feds info about Carmine’s past criminal life—Carmine reportedly said he was responsible for somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five murders, about half of which he did himself—but also about ongoing projects on the outside. For example, a potential witness against the Colombos had fled to Europe, but Persico’s men had located him and were planning to kill him. Because of the info Lloyd supplied, the hit was thwarted. Three other planned hits—another prosecutor, Bruce Baird, and two FBI agents, Damon Taylor and Denis Maduro—were also prevented. Carmine’s crew must’ve figured out that there was a rat—but they had no idea how close to the top it was.

  Lloyd remained a trusted confidant through 1990 when both Carmine and Cowboy Mike were transferred from Marion to the penitentiary in Lompoc, California, fifty miles north of Santa Barbara, a move that in theory would make it harder for Carmine to remotely run Colombo business.

  But living conditions in California were a marked improvement. These were the days before Martin Scorsese movies gave us a glimpse of wiseguy life behind bars. Back then, people tended to underestimate the comforts of home that Persico and his good-fellow pals enjoyed. The prison in Lompoc was converted from a minimum-security facility, where crooked accountants and politicians were allowed to play tennis. Those outside the country-club set found ways to make the place their own. Carmine carefully snipped away at his own rose garden on the prison grounds.

  He put together a little gang of guys. This crew he called the Italian-American Cultural Club. As was true of most cliques, membership had its criteria. Most were button guys, all but one Italian. They were photographed as a group and used the image on their Christmas cards. There were always parties going on, birthdays, Italy wins a game in World Cup calcio, whatever—it looked like they had a caterer. The ICC had an unofficial clubhouse, meetings held at the Group Activity Center, in a room above the family-and-friends visitation center. The facility always made sure there was no alcohol, but good food was tolerated (and shared).

  Tolerated was the key word. The prison wanted to make sure no one thought the ICC was a prison-sanctioned body. Lompoc, rowing a p.r. boat against the current, discouraged the notion that it was a “country club.”

  That said, there was always stuff going on at Lompoc that seemed by any standard to be fun. Prisoners all had jobs, it was true, but their free time was relaxed. The prison had its own band of musical inmates that played on holidays.

  We know because Carmine and his band of brothers posed with the instruments on a bandstand—Junior on drums—for a photo. All they needed were wigs and they could’ve been the Not-So-Young Rascals.

  A barnstorming rodeo came to the pen for a show, largely thanks to Cowboy Mike’s connections, with a few real bulls and bucking broncos. There was a mechanical bull. Thanks to his close friendship with Mike, Carmine had an opportunity to ride it, at least straddle the thing long enough for a memorable photo op.

  Lloyd’s regular letters to the feds continued to stifle Colombo activities, and the crew couldn’t figure out where the leak was. Drug deals went bad, jailbreaks were foiled. Cops and judges and lawyers and prison guards who were on the take were outed. Businesses and unions under Colombo control faced scrutiny.

  Looking at the situation from Carmine’s point of view, he knew that he would never see freedom again, but he wanted to retain power. After all, he had already been boss for sixteen years and was still one of the youngest commission members.

  Even without Cowboy Mike’s clandestine interference, running the family business by remote control got off to a shaky start. Carmine’s alleged initial orders from prison were garbled and botched. Carmine was said to have ordered a hit on a lawyer named William Aronwald, who in 1971 joined the Justice Department’s Joint Strike Force Against Organized Crime in Manhattan. He’d been in private practice since 1978, but had reportedly pissed off the mob. Aronwald had earned a reputation as a prosecutor that had it in for mobsters. He twice convicted Aniello Dellacroce. But the thing that got him in trouble in 1987 came when, because of his part in an earlier investigation, he was called as a prosecution witness in the racketeering trial of John Gotti. Aronwald’s testimony revealed some very sensitive subjects including the absolute “Code of Silence” that Gotti shared with his Gambinos.

  Carmine Persico allegedly passed down the Aronwald hit to underboss Joel “Joe Waverly” Cacace, who sent out a two-man team on March 20, 1987. But the guys fucked up royally and that afternoon shot down the target’s father instead, a seventy-eight-year-old city parking aide, just as he entered Young’s Chinese Laundry to pick up his shirts. The laundry was across the street from the elderly victim’s co-op home in the Long Island City section of Queens. This was only the second time the victim had ever been in that laundry, the first time to drop off his shirts.

  The elder Aronwald was being helped at the counter by a woman in her sixties when a man appeared at the door. The woman buzzed him in and he entered firing a .38 revolver. He shot Aronwald five times, twice in the head and three times to the body. The old man spun around a full three-sixty before collapsing to the floor. The shooter was described as a man in his early twenties, fair-skinned, about five-eight, one-ninety, wearing a gray waist-length jacket and faded blue jeans. The gunman never spoke, but ran out of the store and climbed into the passenger side of a double-parked Chevy Monte Carlo, which promptly zoomed off.

  The younger Aronwald, the actual target, was in a Florida courthouse taking a legal deposition and was informed of his father’s death when a secretary slipped him a note.

  How did they botch it so badly? How could they mistake that old man for a guy in his forties? It was a nightmare. Idiots. As is usually true when there’s collateral damage, this pissed off the whole crime community. These knuckleheads were giving the rackets a bad name, and so Cacace put out a hit on the shooters in the first hit. None of it made much sense, and there were rumblings that having a leader in the fed pen might present communication difficulties.

  Years later (2004), Cacace pleaded guilty to Aronwald’s murder, saying “in March 1987 I passed along a message to someone knowing that by passing the message a person would be killed”—although he was best known for ordering a hit on his ex-wife’s new husband, who happened to be an NYPD officer.

  Prosecutors said that, as part of their case against Cacace, the hit on
Aronwald was ordered by Carmine Persico. This despite the fact that Cacace had not said that in his statement, which remained vague and implicated no one other than Cacace himself. Carmine ordered the hit, U.S. attorney Patricia E. Notopoulis said, because “of the manner in which [Aronwald] engaged in certain prosecutions.”

  The target, the son of the victim, said he couldn’t think of anything he’d done in a courtroom that might piss off Mr. Persico. Perhaps, just like the lunacy in the Long Island City laundry, the whole thing was just one massive mistake.

  * * *

  Dominick “Donnie Shacks” Montemarano, who had been with Carmine since his days on President Street hanging out with the Gallos, went to prison in 1984, got out in the 1990s, and moved to California where he became too close for police comfort with college athletes upon whom he may have been placing bets. He hung with celebs, no doubt about that, was seen having dinner with actress Elizabeth Hurley (he was sixty-seven, she thirty-five), hanging out with movie producers, partying with NFL quarterbacks, and acting as pallbearer at Sonny Bono’s funeral. He did more prison time in 2003 when a domestic-abuse beef violated his parole.