Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business

by Joe Pistone

  While the Colombo civil war was winding down, and with Scarpa in jail for murders he committed during the war, it came out that Scarpa, beginning around 1960, had been a secret informer for the FBI. In exchange for payment, he fed the Bureau invaluable information that led to arrests, indictments, and convictions of his pals.

  Can you imagine how Carmine the Snake Persico must have writhed inside his cage when it was confirmed that his toughest ally, a brother he had fought alongside in the Gallo War, had made a fool of him and was betraying his family’s every move for over three decades? Persico had to be stewing and seething that Scarpa’s information led to indictments that put him and others away and cost the family a ton of money. But how do you get revenge? How do you get your cousin Andy the Fat Man Russo to stick a fork into the eyes of a man dying of AIDS in a prison?

  Persico had to have felt much worse than Rusty Rastelli and the Mafia Commission felt about Sonny Black, Lefty, and me when it ordered hits on the three of us.

  There was a secret story about Scarpa that Jerry Capeci first broke in 1994 in the New York Daily News. I have it on excellent authority that the story is true. In 1964 the KKK kidnapped and murdered three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi: Michael Schwermer, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney. These three civil rights heroes disappeared completely. Two days later their burned-out station wagon was pulled out of a nearby swamp. The FBI conducted a massive hunt in rural Mississippi for 44 days, using sailors and a helicopter, but turned up no bodies.

  There was a nervous Klansman who owned an appliance store, but while he looked to the trained investigator as if he had guilty knowledge, he refused to cooperate in any way. The Bureau flew Scarpa to Mississippi. Scarpa bought a TV from the nervous man and said he’d return at closing time to get it. While the man was helping Scarpa get the TV into his car, Scarpa sapped him and took the Klansman to a shack deep in the woods. Scarpa tied him to a chair while agents waited outside. Scarpa came outside twice to report the Klansman’s answers, and each time the agents knew that he was lying because they had already checked those particular locations for the bodies. Scarpa asked an agent for a gun, went back in, stuck the gun in the Klansman’s mouth and yelled, “Tell me the fucking truth or I’ll blow your fucking brains out!” Not only did the Klansman give up the location of the bodies—buried seventeen-feet deep in red clay at an earthen dam—but he also gave up the names of the Klan killers, leading to seven civil rights convictions.

  Because he was so tough and fearless and no one knew he was an informant, it made perfect sense that the first shots fired in the Colombo civil war would be fired at Greg Scarpa. Getting him out of the way would go a long way toward a Little Vic victory. On November 18, 1991, Scarpa was a passenger in a car being driven by his daughter. Scarpa’s two-year-old granddaughter was also a passenger in that car. Suddenly, a drive-by shooter opened fire. The flying bullets hurt only bystanders, but Scarpa was now more dangerous than a wounded animal; he was a disrespected psychopath.

  Little Vic’s shooters struck again five days later when Wild Bill Cutola’s crew hit Hank the Bank Smurra outside a donut shop. Fifteen days later, Little Vic’s shooters went to a bagel shop owned by Persico allies. They panicked and killed an 18-year-old kid working in the shop for minimum wage, Matteo Speranza, who died not having any idea why.

  That wasn’t the only bad hit in the war. Persico shooters raided a Little Vic social club and killed 78-year-old Tommy Scars Amato, a retired Genovese old-timer who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally, the Persico people apologized to the Genovese people. No doubt, the Chin was more interested in preserving his own assets and avoiding his own trial with his dementia routine than in trying to put an end to this war. In fact, the war’s headlines took heat off of him.

  In December 1991 five Colombo family members were whacked, including one that Scarpa shot while the man was hanging a Christmas wreath on his front door.

  Before Christmas the Brooklyn DA, Charles J. Hynes, in an effort to throw cold water on the war, subpoenaed 28 Colombos before a grand jury. But they all dummied up. Hynes said, “They’ve turned this into a class B movie. We’re not going to allow this county to become a shooting gallery where innocent people are being gunned down.”

  There is no way the Commission that ruled the Mafia when I was under would have ever allowed things to reach the point where a grand jury was convened for the killing of an innocent 18-year-old. The heat caused by the spotlight of a grand jury would have led “the big boys” to insist that the Colombo family troubles be straightened out at once. Persico would have been forcibly retired.

  The “civil war” raged for two years. They had done hits at a donut shop and a bagel shop, and in 1992 they moved on to something completely different, a pastry shop. James Caan’s buddy Jo-Jo Russo and two other Persicos shot John Minerva and another Little Vic man in front of Minerva’s Massapequa, Long Island pastry shop. No wonder so many of them have nicknames like “Fat” and “Big.”

  In the absence of a true ruling Commission, the people of the United States of America stepped in to end the violence. On April 1, 1992, Little Vic was indicted on RICO and an old murder that pre-dated the war. Little Vic at 58 got life without parole. With their own boss in jail, Little Vic’s faction could no longer protest the fact that Persico was in jail, and they made peace. At the end, there were thirteen dead with two of the dead not involved in the war. Four of the dead were Persico’s, and six were Little Vic’s.

  The last murder occurred on October 20, 1993. An 18-year-old Persico triggerman and two accomplices hit Joe Scopo, the son of the Concrete Club bagman, Ralph Scopo. When the 18-year old heard that his two accomplices were bragging that they had done the hit themselves, he whacked them both. The teenage triggerman was convicted of those murders and got four life sentences plus 45 years. Across his back the 18-year-old has a tattoo in Italian that translates: “Death Before Dishonor.”You have to wonder who filled a young kid’s head with that kind of horseshit.

  After the war, to cement relations between the two factions, Persico appointed Wild Bill Cutolo underboss of the newly unified Colombo family. In May 1999, six years after the Colombo civil war ended, Wild Bill disappeared. His body was never found. Is there any doubt that the Snake seethed in jail, bided his time, and finally got Wild Bill?

  Persico’s son Little Allie Boy, now 52, was indicted for his role in the Wild Bill murder and, at the time of this writing, is scheduled to go to trial. The two-year war brought an onslaught of defectors trying to save their skins, including two capos and the former consigliere Carmine Sessa who started the war by warning Persico about Little Vic. It brought 73 capos, soldiers, and associates under indictment for war crimes. Fifteen Little Vics were convicted. Forty-one Persicos were convicted, including Jo-Jo Russo, who got life for the hits in front of Minerva’s pastry shop.

  This “civil war” was a gift that kept on giving. After Jo-Jo’s conviction, his father, the acting boss Andy the Fat Man Russo, attempted to get to a juror. The idea was to manufacture false legal grounds for an appeal. It was unique appellate jury tampering. If the juror would come forward on her own to reveal improper jury conduct, such as one juror referring derogatively to “dagos” and “wops,” then Jo-Jo would get a new trial with the luxury of having heard the government’s entire case. Andy the Fat Man used his cumare, the lawyer Dorothy Fiorenza, to try to reach out to the anonymous juror that Jo-Jo’s cumare had recognized from childhood when she visited the trial. The lovely Dorothy Fiorenza—now married to Tattoo Fiorenza, who is serving life for murder and is dying of AIDS—copped to obstruction of justice and testified against Andy the Fat Man. At his own sentencing, the Fat Man told the prosecutor, Daniel Dorsky, “You ended up getting me a life sentence with this Mickey Mouse case.”

  Thirteen Little Vics were acquitted after a controversy arose when it was revealed that Scarpa had been a Bureau informant for decades before the civil war and for the two years th
e war raged. By the time of the war, the supervisor of the Mafia Commission Case, Lin DeVecchio, was handling Scarpa. Allegations were made that Lin DeVecchio was supplying information to Scarpa that Scarpa then used to gain tactical advantage for Persico against Little Vic. It became known as “The Scarpa Defense.” Basically, the Little Vics’ defense was that the government and Scarpa attacked the Little Vics and they merely defended themselves.

  This defense led to a two-year investigation by the Department of Justice, which concluded not only that there were no grounds to indict Lin DeVecchio, but also that there was insufficient evidence to bring Lin up on internal Bureau violations.A later investigation launched by Judge Jack Weinstein reached the same conclusion. Weinstein got it right when he wrote, “DeVecchio and Scarpa’s relationship reflects, to a degree, the manner in which the FBI and other investigative agencies conduct business with top-echelon informants and the hazards associated with doing so. . . . That DeVecchio conspired with Scarpa on the side of the Persico faction or that he stirred up the war is not [likely].”

  Many Colombo turncoats who were in positions to know gave statements that contradicted the allegations against DeVecchio. Before he died of AIDS in 1994 at 66, Scarpa, who had been convicted of wartime murders, was interviewed in jail and said that Lin DeVecchio had not provided him any confidential information that he used in the war or to kill anyone. Scarpa had killed three Little Vics, but he admitted that he never divulged that fact to Lin.

  Nevertheless, in March 2006, over twelve years after the war ended and on referral from a Massachusetts Congressman, Brooklyn DA Charles J. Hynes—who had convened a wartime grand jury in December 1991 and had talked about a “class B movie”—indicted Lin DeVecchio on four state murder charges. News of this state indictment came out during the Mafia Cops trial in federal court, and DA Hynes managed to grab his share of headlines and face-time on TV. Hynes got to call his case “the most stunning example of official corruption I have ever seen.”

  The indictment alleged that Lin DeVecchio aided Scarpa’s war effort with confidential information knowing Scarpa would use it to kill people, and that before the war Lin had provided information that led to Scarpa murdering informants. The DA added the allegation that Lin got weekly payments from Scarpa for this information totaling $66,000.

  After Lin helped to bring down the Mafia Commission, and by degrees the Mafia itself, as this book went to press Lin DeVecchio faced life in the can, doing hard time alongside the people he helped put there.

  Jimmy Kossler, Pat Marshall, Jules, myself, and others—who worked with Lin in our tireless effort to destroy the Mafia—are helping him raise money for his defense. Damon Taylor, the agent who worked with Scarpa before Lin got involved with him, said about Scarpa, “He was the crown jewel, for all his faults. I would give credibility to anything he said.” Damon is helping raise money for Lin’s defense. Jimmy Kallstrom, who is now the senior counter-terrorism adviser to New York’s Governor George Pataki, said, “Lin DeVecchio is not guilty and he did not partake in what he’s being charged with. It’s as simple as that.”

  However, one agent who worked under Lin—an agent named Christopher Favo—helped keep the allegations alive with a story about the time Favo walked into Lin’s office and told him that two of the Little Vic faction had just been hit. “As I started into that he slapped his hand on the desk and he said, ‘We’re going to win this thing,’ and he seemed excited about it. He seemed like he didn’t know who we were—the FBI. It seemed like a line had been blurred. I thought there was something wrong. He was compromised. He had lost track of who he was.”

  Nothing for nothing, but the phrases “He seemed,” “He seemed like,” and “It seemed like” are not words an investigator uses. That’s not “the facts, just the facts.” That sort of wishy-washy language is more like what you might expect from Doctor Phil than from an FBI agent. The only “fact” in all of that is that Lin heard the tremendous news about two of Little Vic’s supporters getting whacked, slapped his desk, and said openly to anyone who wanted to hear it, “We’re going to win this thing.”

  Can you imagine that a supervisor and seasoned agent who had gone bad for money and was secretly helping Greg Scarpa commit murder in exchange for weekly payola, would openly cheer for the wiseguys in front of a subordinate?

  Lin explained the obvious. “What I meant was that the fighting inside the Colombo family was going to help us—the FBI—win the war against the Colombos by providing us with tons of defectors and intelligence.”

  When I think of that prosecutor, Diane Giaccolone, getting Willie Boy Johnson murdered by exposing him as our informant, then losing her case against Gotti and going on with her legal career unscathed, I feel even worse for Lin.

  In addition to supervising the Mafia Commission Case, Lin had headed the Colombo family squad and the Bonanno family squad—my two Mafia families. Maybe they ought to charge the rest of us in the case as all being a part of and furthering Lin’s criminal enterprise.

  That would include the terrific Colombo family prosecutor, George Stamboulidis, who praised all the murdering that resulted from the “civil war” and what that murdering produced. “The war helped us destroy the family from within. Instead of pulling together in the face of government investigations, they were worrying about saving their lives and that gave them incentives to become cooperating witnesses.” Let the butchery begin, Stamboulidis is all but saying.

  That also would include the terrific Lucchese family prosecutor, Gregory O’Connell, who praised the “killing frenzy” that Amuso and Gaspipe produced. “Gaspipe was more dangerous than Amuso and more responsible for the mayhem that fortunately for us ruined the family.” Let the “mayhem” begin, O’Connell is saying.

  An opinion by one of the judges who granted a motion for a new trial to Jo-Jo Russo for the Minerva pastry murder based on one aspect of the “Scarpa defense”—the government’s failure to disclose that Scarpa often blamed others for hits he did—illustrates how little the amateur knows about what the professional needs to do to get the job done. It is comments like the following from Judge Charles Sifton that make me shy away from revealing everything about my undercover duties. Here’s what a federal judge, a political appointee, wrote about a dedicated agent, Lin DeVecchio : “Scarpa emerges as sinister and violent and at the same time manipulative and deceptive with everyone, including DeVecchio. . . . DeVecchio emerges as arrogant or stupid, or easily manipulated, but at the same time, caught up in the complex and difficult task of trying to make the best use of Scarpa’s information to bring the war to a close.”

  Well now, the judge’s anti-war position is the exact opposite of George Stamboulidis’s or Gregory O’Connell’s. Or mine, when I learned that Sonny Black had been whacked on account of me. To begin with, but for the dedicated good guys like Lin working on the Mafia Commission Case, there wouldn’t have been a Colombo family “civil war” in the first place. Once started, where does it say that it was Lin’s job to use “Scarpa’s information to bring the war to a close?” Were we supposed to save the Colombo family from its own self-destruction or were we supposed to harvest the cooperating witnesses that were refugees from that war?

  Judge Sifton allowed the conviction of one of the Minerva pastry murderers to stand because a Parliament cigarette found at the scene corroborated it. Of course, Sifton neglected to mention that the Parliament also corroborated Scarpa. Sifton went on to write that he was not going to let the defendants get away completely. He was only ordering a new trial because the government did not cross over the line into a “level of uncivilized and indecent behavior.” At the next appellate level, Sifton’s grant of a new trial was overturned. Jo-Jo Russo’s murder conviction was reinstated and he remains in jail for life. So far.

  When I teach undercovers, I tell them to know who they are dealing with at all times. This is the same Colombo family that, in March 1987, two months after Persico got his hundred-year sentence, whacked 78-year-old George
Aronwald while he was picking up his shirts in a Chinese laundry in Queens. The Colombo shooters followed him into the laundry and shot him twice in the head and five times in the body. They mistook him for their actual target, his son, the former federal prosecutor William Aronwald.

  Don’t be fooled by who they claim to be. Two months before the Aronwald family’s tragedy, Carmine the Snake Persico’s wife (and Little Allie Boy’s mother, Joyce) wrote a letter to the Long Island newspaper Newsday. Believe me, Joyce had to have had the boss’s approval before she sent this letter about the “. . . years of excessive punishment the government has inflicted on 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.”

  Twenty years after the Mafia Commission Case, a jailhouse informant revealed that he had been Carmine Persico’s “legal secretary” for years. Persico, the son of a legal stenographer, had his own letters to his lawyers typed for him by the informant. According to the rules that our prisons are saddled with, the authorities are not permitted to open and read any letters addressed to lawyers, including those that the informant typed. The shit-stained lawyers who got the letters from Persico passed them on to his acting bosses, like his cousin Andy the Fat Man Russo, the father of Jo-Jo, the convicted murderer, and the friend of James Caan. That scheme involving letters to lawyers enabled Persico to continue to conduct family business and order hits from the can.

  Once the FBI learned of this from the jailhouse informant, they created a “lawyer” mail drop for the snitch. The drop revealed that an enraged Carmine Persico, who had nothing to lose because he could get no more time, attempted to order hits on Rudy Giuliani, prosecutors Aaron Marcu and Bruce Baird, and FBI agents Denis Maduro and Damon Taylor. Just like he no doubt ordered the hit on former federal prosecutor William Aronwald that caused the mistaken murder of his father George in a Chinese laundry.