Deal With the Devil: The FBI's Secret Thirty-Year Relationship With a Mafia Killer

by Peter Lance

  “They took him into the precinct and shaved off all his hair,” said Vic Jr.

  After that, said Andrew, Little Vic got a box of cherry bombs and exploded them in front of the police station. “And that only got him in more trouble.”

  Unlike other street gang veterans like Carmine Persico and Anthony Scarpati, who joined the Colombo family with lengthy police records, Orena’s rap sheet was relatively clean. According to longtime New York Times reporter Selwyn Raab, Orena had “minor busts for gambling and one for perjury, without prison time.” The longest he served was a four-month stretch in a Long Island jail for loan sharking.21 Even Lin DeVecchio described Orena in his memoirs as “a successful loan shark, bookmaker, construction mogul and waste-hauling tycoon,” but “not a volatile hair trigger like some.”22

  Vic Orena, 1980s

  Little Vic soon became known for his business acumen. By 1987, an FBI 209 from Lin DeVecchio noted that “Vic Orena is heavily involved in the gas tax scam operation on Long Island.”23 Initially developed by Russian gangsters, who controlled hundreds of gas stations in the New York area, the scheme resulted in the theft of up to thirty cents a gallon siphoned off by the Colombos, who had muscled in on the Russians’ action. Astonishingly, the IRS estimated that up to $1 billion a year in federal tax revenue was being lost, with 10 percent of that—or $100 million a year—going to the mob.24

  In 1986, Michael Franzese, the Colombo capo who first tapped into the scam after being asked to collect a $70,000 debt, was listed as number eighteen on Fortune magazine’s list of the “fifty most wealthy and powerful mob bosses.”25 And while Vic Orena Sr. wasn’t quite in that league, he was still raking in millions a year for the borgata.

  Old-School and Anti-Drugs

  As one indication of Vic Orena’s earning power, Kenneth Geller, a Long Island accountant who confessed to his role in a murder conspiracy26 and falsifying up to three thousand tax returns,27 once borrowed $1 million from the Orenas. Geller used the money, in turn, to make loans at usurious rates in an effort to feed his gambling habit. At one point, he admitted that he was paying the Orenas $12,200 a week in vigorish, or interest, on those loans.28 But Geller wasn’t making the payments under the threat of physical harm, like Scarpa’s clients. Even though the government portrayed him as a “victim,”29 in more than one hundred undercover recordings Geller made for the FBI of his dealings with John Orena, not a single one showed any evidence that he was being leaned on or physically pressured to pay the vig.30

  Further, in none of those tapes or the dozens of other hours of surreptitious recordings entered as evidence by the Feds at Vic Sr.’s 1992 trial was there a hint that Orena or his sons sold narcotics.

  “He was making this kind of money without having to resort to drug dealing,” Andrew told me. “When it came to dope, my father was totally against it. He not only refused to sell it, but he wouldn’t tolerate anybody dealing it in the family.”31

  Even Joseph “Joey Brains” Ambrosino, one of the government’s main witnesses against Vic Sr. in the Ocera trial, described a meeting at a restaurant in March 1991 attended by Robert “Bobby Zam” Zambardi, a longtime member of Scarpa’s Wimpy Boys crew, and his stepson “Jerry Boy” Chiari,32 whom he was proposing for induction into the family. According to Ambrosino, Orena told Chiari that “if he behaves himself and . . . gets out of the drug business, that he [Orena] would make sure he got ‘straightened out,’” i.e., “made.”33

  To underscore his father’s antipathy to drug dealing, John Orena told me a story about a phone call he got one night from his father in 1990.

  Vic Sr. wanted John to drive him to a prison to pick up an old friend who had just been paroled after serving eighteen years for armed robbery. “This guy had nobody else to pick him up,” said John, “so he called my father. We drive to the prison and the guy gets in the car. Right away he says to my father, ‘Vic, if you don’t mind, I gotta ask your advice. I just got out of jail. I’m broke, I have two kids to support, and I got a chance to make some money.’ And my father knows where the guy’s goin’ with this. He says, ‘That business?’ Meaning drugs. And the guy says, ‘Yeah.’ My father shakes his head and says, ‘Listen, you have a son?’ The guy says, ‘Yeah.’ My father asks, ‘How old?’ The guy says, ‘Twenty-one, twenty-two.’ And my father looks him straight in the eye and says, ‘Then why don’t you go home and kill him?’ And the guy can’t believe it. He looks at my father and says, ‘Vic, what’re you talkin’ about? Why would I—’ And my father cuts him off. He says, ‘You might as well do it. Shoot him. ’Cause if you’re sellin’ dope, you’ll be killin’ somebody else’s son.’”

  “That’s how dead against it he was,” said Vic Jr.

  “He looked at it with that old-school mentality,” said Andrew. “It was antifamily. It tore people apart. You remember that scene in The Godfather where Don Barzini wants to sell it to the blacks and another boss calls them ‘animals’? Well, my father didn’t see it like that. He grew up with black kids. He lived with Jewish people. He was one of the most tolerant men I ever met, and he just drew the line when it came to drugs.”

  “It was a matter of principle,” said Vic Jr. “But my father was also a practical man and he knew that drugs would be the end of this thing they had.” According to Vic’s three older sons, whom I interviewed, it was their father’s intolerance for drug dealing that ultimately put him on a collision course with Gregory Scarpa.

  From Soldier to Boss

  In order to understand fully the role that Greg Scarpa Sr. played in instigating and waging the third war, it’s necessary to go back and examine the path taken by Vic Orena Sr. in the Colombo family, where he’d been a trusted and favored surrogate of the Persicos until the conflict broke out. It’s also important to consider that until the violence erupted in 1991, Greg Sr. had worked for years to undermine Carmine Persico’s position in the family. The newly released files document how Senior—who claimed to be fighting for the “Persico faction”—routinely informed on the Snake.

  As far back as August 1967, Scarpa told his FBI handlers that Persico was “operating a large numbers operation in Brooklyn.”34 In 1970 Anthony Villano, Senior’s third contacting agent, noted that “there has always been ‘bad blood’ between [SCARPA] and PERSICO.”35

  During the second war with the Gallos, Scarpa not only suggested that Persico may have had a role in the attack on Joseph Colombo,36 but he pointedly blamed Persico for the rubout of Crazy Joe Gallo in 1972.37 And ultimately it was “34” who provided the lion’s share of probable cause that resulted in Persico’s century-long sentence in the Commission case.38 A 209 sent to FBI Headquarters in Washington after Scarpa’s death in 1994 even reported that Greg Sr. “hated the Persicos.”39

  “Does that sound like the kind of loyalty that would have inspired Greg Scarpa to kill for Carmine Persico?” asks Vic Orena’s former attorney Flora Edwards. “Of course not.”40

  On the other hand, the 209s demonstrate how Vic Orena was given more and more responsibility by “Junior” Persico shortly after the boss drew back-to-back sentences of thirty-nine years in November 198641 and one hundred years in January 1987.42 After the first sentence, a three-man ruling “committee” was set up by Persico to run the family’s day-to-day operations. The troika consisted of Vincent “Jimmy” Angelino, Joseph “Joe T” Tomasello, and Benedetto “Benny” Aloi, who later became consigliere.43

  At that point, Orena, who joined the borgata in 1980,44 had been a trusted soldier in the crew run by Carmine Persico’s son Little Allie Boy. But when both Periscos went off to the U.S. penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, Orena was elevated to acting capo of that crew.45

  Carmine had originally intended to appoint his brother Alphonse as the family boss in his absence. “Big Allie,” as he was known, was the boyfriend of Mary Bari, and it was the alleged fear that she would disclose his location that had led to her death. As noted, though, Alphonse Persico skipped out on a loan-sharking charge in 1980, forfe
iting a $250,000 bond,46 only to be captured and sentenced to twenty-five years in December 1987.47

  And so, with Big Allie unavailable to run the family, Little Allie Boy not due for release until 1993, and “Jimmy” Angelino also facing jail, in the summer of 1987 Carmine Persico reconfigured the ruling “committee” to include Aloi, Joseph “Jo Jo” Russo, and Vic Orena.48

  Sometime that fall, Vic Jr. was also inducted into the family.49

  By April 8, 1988, as a result of Vic Sr.’s continuing loyalty and earning power, Persico finally decided to elevate him to “acting boss,” scrapping the three-man control structure.50 At that point, Benny Aloi was appointed underboss and Angelino, still free at that time, was made consigliere. But Persico, the imprisoned family boss, so trusted Orena that he invested him with a crucial power: Without seeking permission from the Snake, Orena could induct new soldiers to grow the family’s ranks.51

  “I can’t emphasize enough how significant Carmine’s trust was in my father,” said Andrew Orena.52 “A boss doesn’t hand the keys to the family to a nonrelative unless he knows for sure that he won’t betray him.”

  In his epic study of the Mafia, Five Families, Selwyn Raab offered some insight into why that happened for Vic Sr. “Orena was well regarded among the Colombo cognoscenti for his business acumen,” he wrote. “A mobster with decades of unfailing service to the Persico wing of the family, Orena skillfully handled major loan-sharking and labor rackets, principally on Long Island.”53

  But the rap by the Feds would soon be that Vic’s ambition got the best of him. The government’s position, and the theory argued by federal prosecutors in all the Colombo war cases, was that Vic Sr. ignited the third war in a move to become the official head of the borgata. Lin DeVecchio expressed that position best in his book:

  As obsessed as Junior was at installing his heir apparent as Boss, Orena became equally obsessed with making his acting Boss job permanent.54

  But the very FBI 209s that Lin DeVecchio wrote documenting the war from Scarpa’s perspective also reveal “34’s” behind-the-scenes moves to destabilize the family and dominate the Colombos. Nearly three decades earlier, one of the first airtels to J. Edgar Hoover detailing Scarpa’s role as a Top Echelon informant had predicted that a bid by Greg’s padrone Charles LoCicero to take over the borgata “would place this source [Scarpa] . . . at the top operational level” of the Colombos. By 1989, using Carmine Sessa as his surrogate, Scarpa launched a plan to put himself in that position. It started, the evidence shows, with the brutal murder and burial of Tommy Ocera.

  Chapter 22

  DEATH BY WIRE

  In the fall of 1989, Tommy Ocera was one made member of the Colombo crime family who seemed to have it made.1 He was part owner of the Manor, a successful restaurant and catering hall in the upscale suburb of Merrick, Long Island.2 He earned income from a refuse-carting business3 and owned a part interest in a gasoline supply company.4 He had a successful loan-sharking “book”5 and he ran two gambling clubs.6 A former prizefighter, Ocera was having an affair with Diane Montesano, an attractive retired flight attendant for TWA who was now manager of his restaurant.7

  But five weeks later, after a tiny slip-up in which his loan-shark records were seized by law enforcers, Ocera disappeared. According to the Feds he was suspected of skimming from the Colombo family and brutally slain. Two years later, his body was discovered, strangled with a wire and stabbed in the neck. His remains had been shoved into a car trunk before being dumped in a shallow grave.

  It was Vic Orena’s conviction for Ocera’s murder that put him away for life. But new evidence developed in this investigation raises a question: Was Tommy just another casualty of the dangerous wiseguy life, or was he a pawn in Greg Scarpa’s larger strategic plot to dominate the family? Whatever the answer, one thing is clear: The story behind Ocera’s rubout played out like a graphic episode of The Sopranos.

  The Five-Martini Lunch

  The Manor restaurant opened for business on Columbus Day 1988. Tommy Ocera was the only one of the three partners who’d run a restaurant before, but over the next eleven years more than thirty-six thousand customers enjoyed the Manor’s Italian cuisine.8 Every Monday night, according to Diane Montesano, whose husband, Anthony, was a co-owner, Tommy’s “friends” would come by. Among the most prominent were Vic Orena and his sons, who often took one of the two large tables in the back. Later in December, when Carmine Sessa’s brother Michael got made, his induction ceremony took place at the Manor. Among the other associates who swore a blood oath to the borgata that night was Vincent “Schwartzie” Cascio, who frequently drove for Little Vic.9

  Ocera often divided his time between the restaurant and his Long Island gambling clubs, located on Merrick Road and Post Avenue. They featured card games and Joker Poker machines. Tommy also had loan-shark money “on the street,” and he regularly got envelopes from a man who was in the carting business, which at that time was dominated by the Lucchese and Genovese families.10 Then, in early October 1989, something happened that marked the beginning of the end for Tommy Ocera.

  On October 5, investigators for the Suffolk County Police served a search warrant on the Manor. Raiding Ocera’s office, they confiscated a series of business records, including a “Week-at-a-Glance” appointment book that was sitting in the open on Tommy’s desk. Diane Montesano, who’d left her husband five months earlier, was at the restaurant at the time of the raid. By now she was romantically involved with Ocera.

  Four days later, Ocera drove Montesano to the police department in an effort to get the records back. Detectives returned a desk calendar marked with upcoming catering events and a business checkbook, but Tommy was shocked to learn that they’d decided to hold on to the small appointment book. In it, according to the Feds, along with the names and phone numbers of vendors who supplied the restaurant, was a series of Ocera’s handwritten notes detailing various shylock loans.

  After leaving the detectives, Ocera was so worried about those records that he went to a restaurant with Montesano and tossed down five martinis in rapid succession. Since he was too drunk to drive, she drove him back to her place to let him sleep it off. As she later testified under oath, Montesano then went back to work.

  Later that night Vic Jr. and John Orena visited the restaurant. They asked to speak to Tommy, so Montesano took them to see him, driving to her house with the two brothers following in their own car. At that point, Montesano sensed no hint of any threat to Ocera. She later testified that Vic Sr. always behaved like “an absolute gentleman” when he came to the restaurant,11 and she had no reason to suspect that his sons would act otherwise. She let Vic Jr. and John into her house, where Tommy was sobering up, then drove back to the Manor and closed up for the night.

  Things stayed quiet for the next two weeks and no evidence was ever presented by the government that Tommy felt threatened at that point. Then, on the night of October 22, Diane Montesano and Ocera were leaving the club around one thirty A.M. after closing for the night. Diane was carrying the cash receipts from the restaurant, which she was taking home to deposit the next day, so Ocera walked her to her car.12

  As they approached their vehicles, Montesano noticed two cars across the street parked in the lot of the nearby Long Island Rail Road station. “I knew there were no trains coming in or leaving at this time,” she later testified.

  Tommy got in his car and pulled out of the restaurant lot first, but Diane was concerned that there might be a break-in at the restaurant. So rather than following Ocera, she boldly drove across to where the two cars were parked. As she approached them, she noticed that each car had dark tinted windows. The headlights were off but the engines were running. One of the cars had a broken taillight, she testified, and she could just make out “two figures” in each vehicle. She was “concerned,” she said, “because [she] carried all the monies from the restaurant.”

  Now, having lost sight of Ocera’s car, Montesano headed home. Since “there was not a d
irect route to [her] house,”13 she followed a series of side streets that “curved and turned”—until suddenly she came upon a Cadillac in front of her with New Jersey plates. Later, Montesano would recall that it was one of the two cars from the railroad station. Apparently the driver knew the way to her house, and as he drove past a streetlight, Diane could just make out his face. She later picked his picture out of a series of FBI surveillance photographs of Colombo family members.

  It was Gregory Scarpa Sr.

  Driving at Her Head-On

  The Caddy turned off on a side street, she said, but when she got home a few minutes later she noticed the other car from the LIRR station parked “directly in front” of her house. Afraid that she might get cornered in her driveway, Montesano drove past it, when suddenly, “a car came towards [her] with its lights off,” then “put on [its] bright headlights.”

  The streets were wet and covered with leaves. As the vehicle came at her head-on, Diane was forced to swerve up onto the sidewalk.

  “I almost lost control of my car,” she testified. But somehow she managed to drive past the car, roaring up the street and quickly turning. Then suddenly, she found herself once again confronting the Cadillac. “The car that I had been following with the New Jersey plates . . . had turned in the opposite direction and was now in front of me,” she said.

  Somehow, Montesano was able to get past it. Then, about two minutes later, she encountered Tommy Ocera, who was now approaching her house in his vehicle. Ocera quickly parked and got into her car. She told him what had happened and switched off her headlights. For the next few minutes, she said, they drove quietly through the back streets of her neighborhood trying to assess the situation.14

  At that point Ocera suggested that they drive to Brooklyn, but when they approached the entrance to the Southern State Parkway, they were surprised to see that one of the cars from the LIRR station—the one with the broken taillight—was half a block in front of them.