by Peter Lance
Two Knights and a Pawn
To appreciate how Greg Scarpa Sr. instigated that conflict, consider how he first conspired against two of the family’s most powerful captains. By 1990, with Vic Orena well established as Carmine Persico’s designee for acting boss, Scarpa had two immediate rivals: William Cutolo and Nicholas Grancio.10
Cutolo ran an enormous loan-sharking operation, with more than $2 million on the street.11 A former Teamster official, he had been accused of labor racketeering with links to District Council 37, New York City’s largest municipal union.12 Known as “Billy Fingers,” Cutolo often wore western boots and sometimes even a cowboy hat, earning him a second nickname: “Wild Bill.”
Across Brooklyn, “Nicky Black” Grancio was a gregarious capo who presided like a benevolent don over his neighborhood near Avenue U and McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn. “He was one of those bigger-than-life guys who would take an entire pizza, fold it over like a slice, and eat it,” said Vic Orena Jr. of bald-headed Nicky, who was fiercely loyal to his father.13 Both men—Cutolo and Grancio—would eventually be murdered. But at first Scarpa set out to give Lin DeVecchio enough dirt on Cutolo to get him removed by the Feds. The pawn in this game was Carmine Sessa, who, with Scarpa Sr. as the chess master, moved from made guy to consigliere in just over three years.
Few gangsters in the annals of organized crime enjoyed the rise through the ranks experienced by five-foot-four Carmine Sessa. Even Lin DeVecchio, in his book, describes Sessa’s trajectory as “meteoric.”14 Although DeVecchio mistakenly writes that Sessa was “straightened out” in 1988,15 his own 209 to Washington dated March 13, 1987, reports that Carmine (whose name was misspelled “Sesso”) was made on that date, along with Robert “Bobby Zam” Zambardi.16 Both Sessa and Zambardi had participated in the brutal slaying of Mary Bari at Carmine’s club Occasions,17 the site of Scarpa’s previous rubout involving a loan-shark victim.18
Carmine Sessa, 1980s
At Lin DeVecchio’s 2007 murder trial, Sessa confessed to his role in thirteen homicides over the years,19 ultimately pleading guilty to four: Bari; Anthony Bolino, whom he claimed he killed as “a favor” to Anthony Casso;20 Jimmy Angelino, the family consigliere—a hit we’ll detail shortly; and Anthony “Bird” Collucio, a shylock who was a member of Michael Sessa’s crew.21 That was the murder in which “Joey Brains” Ambrosino also admitted his involvement.22
Carmine initially fingered his brother in that hit,23 and since his conviction in 1992, Michael has been serving life for the murder, which he insists he didn’t do. But it’s fair to say that after years of doing hits and burglaries in the Wimpy Boys crew, once he was sponsored for membership by Greg Scarpa, Carmine’s movement up the Colombo ladder was unprecedented.
After getting his button in March 1987, Sessa was designated a captain just seventeen months later, in August 1988. He took over the crew formerly headed by Carmine Persico’s own brother Teddy.24 Less than a year after that, in May 1990, Sessa was anointed consigliere—the number three position in a family of 130 members.25
“Nobody moves that fast through the organization without some kind of outside help,” said Vic Orena Jr.26 “Carmine had always been what we called one of ‘the disciples of Scarpa.’ He was Greg’s boy. Always a spear carrier. Never a leader. And now, suddenly there is the perception that he is some kind of ninety weight in the family.27 But what was really going on was that Scarpa was in the background pulling the strings and he put Carmine on the white horse to make it look like he was leading the charge.”
Thirteen months after being designated the family’s “counselor,” Sessa took part in the plot to murder Vic Orena, the botched hit that touched off the new Colombo war.28
Long before that, however, Sessa got so close to the Orenas that he was considered a member of their family with a small “f.”
“He was always hanging out with us,” said Andrew. “He’d visit me in the Pontiac dealership I had in Cedarhurst [Long Island]. My father had a fifty-foot yacht and everybody would joke that Carmine used it more than we did.” Indeed, Lin DeVecchio filed a 209 dated June 13, 1989, fourteen months after Vic Orena was elevated to acting boss, noting that:
CARMINE SESSA RECENTLY SOLD HIS HOUSE IN BROOKLYN AND MOVED TO LONG ISLAND TO BE CLOSER TO VIC ORENA. SOURCE SAID SESSA AND ORENA HAVE BEEN VERY CLOSE AND SESSA IS BECOMING A MAJOR POWER IN THE COLOMBO FAMILY DUE TO ORENA’S POSITION.29
When Sessa first got made in March 1987, under the sponsorship of Greg Scarpa, he went into Vic Orena’s crew.30 At one point, Sessa appeared to be so supportive of Orena that he tried to go into the produce business with him, but the idea was reportedly rejected by Jimmy Angelina, who was consigliere at the time.
The question is, in the lead-up to the war, when Sessa not only conspired to kill Orena but became one of his chief adversaries and eventually took over as acting boss, was he being manipulated by Greg Scarpa?
The evidence we’ve uncovered suggests that he was.
For one thing, absent a push from Scarpa, Sessa had every reason to be supportive of Little Vic Orena. Orena had been incredibly generous to Carmine. Not only did Vic preside over Sessa’s rapid promotion from soldier to capo, but he made him consigliere. Orena even loaned Sessa $130,000 to start his own loan-shark book, independent of Greg Scarpa, after Carmine became more fearful of Scarpa following the death of his close friend Joe Brewster. Sessa later testified at DeVecchio’s trial that he “wanted to distance” himself from Scarpa.31
So Orena gave him the money to pay back Scarpa, who was charging him “two points” of vig. In fact, Little Vic was so generous to Sessa that he charged him only half a point on the first hundred thousand, and one point on the thirty thousand balance.32 As such, Sessa was actually able to make money on the transaction and retire his debt to Scarpa. The diminutive Sessa often made his payments to Orena near Stella’s Restaurant on Long Island, a location that would take on historic significance as the war began. But whatever affection and loyalty Carmine Sessa might have had for Vic Orena Sr., it was far outweighed by his fear of the Grim Reaper.
“Sessa had killed multiple people on Greg’s orders,” says Orena’s former attorney Flora Edwards, “so Greg had that hold over him. And, given his status as an FBI informant, [Scarpa] could have dropped a dime on Carmine anytime.”33
The Body in the Candy Store
At one point in the late 1980s, it became clear to Sessa that one hit in particular made him vulnerable since Greg Sr. literally knew where the body was buried. It was the murder of Sal “the Hammerhead” Cardaci, which Scarpa had ordered in January 1983.34 Fearful that Cardaci was going to “rat” on crew member Billy Meli, Scarpa had lured him to Mike’s Candy, a store Senior owned down the street from his social club. Sessa then shot him with a .357 Magnum and buried his body in the basement using quicklime.
During a debriefing in 1994, Sessa told FBI agents that sometime after Vic Orena took over as acting boss, Anthony Casso informed him that “Gregory Scarpa Sr. was a snitch.”35
At that point Sessa trusted Orena enough to pass the news on to him, so Orena advised that he move Cardaci’s body. Sessa then undertook what amounted to a black-bag job, secretly entering the candy store with Bobby Zam and others, who helped him dig up the remains. But there was a hitch.
As they were moving the deteriorated corpse out to a car, Joey Scarpa, Greg’s youngest son, happened by. He didn’t see the body and said nothing, but later his father grilled Zambardi about what they were doing in the store.
Zam feigned ignorance and Sessa did the same when Scarpa asked him on two other occasions if he’d dug up the body. Terrified of Greg, with whom he’d killed two people in his own club Occasions, Sessa just clammed up.36 “But there’s no doubt that Scarpa held the knowledge of Cardaci’s murder over Sessa like a guillotine,” said Andrew Orena, “and he could drop it at any time. I know that Carmine cared for my father, but when it came to his own survival he was going to follow Scarpa, and when Greg snapped his fingers, Car
mine jumped.”37
Targeting Wild Bill
While Scarpa was encouraging Carmine Sessa to betray Vic Orena behind the scenes, he was openly critical of one of Vic’s most trusted captains, William Cutolo. It was purportedly a crew sent by Wild Bill that fired the first shots at Scarpa during the war, but in the years leading up to that November 1991 incident, “34” gave the Feds the kind of inside intelligence they needed to indict and convict Cutolo if he couldn’t be brought down by force.
Wild Bill Cutolo
In much the same way he had been undermining Carmine Persico with his Bureau handlers since the early 1960s, Scarpa started providing DeVecchio with significant intelligence on Cutolo in 1989, after Wild Bill became Orena’s underboss. The following excerpts from teletypes and 209s DeVecchio sent to Washington demonstrate how Greg not only helped the government track Cutolo’s rise in the family but also gave the FBI enough details to obtain wiretaps on the flamboyant capo, who was one of Scarpa’s two chief rivals.
ON AUGUST 1, 1989 SOURCE ADVISED THAT BILLY CUTOLO CONTINUES TO USE SECRETS [LOUNGE] 62-01 11TH AVENUE BROOKLYN, NEW YORK TO MEET WITH HIS CREW AND DISCUSS ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES TO INCLUDE LOANSHARKING LABOR RACKETEERING AND EXTORTION.38
ON NOVEMBER 16TH, 1989 SOURCE ADVISED THAT WILLIAM CUTOLO . . . HAS GAINED CONSIDERABLE POWER AND INFLUENCE IN THE FAM-ILY IN A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME, IN PART DUE TO HIS INFLUENCE IN UNION ACTIVITIES AND HIS SKILL AS A MONEY MAKER FOR THE FAMILY.39
ON DECEMBER 25TH, 1989 SOURCE ADVISED THAT WILLIAM CUTOLO FINANCES SHYLOCK LOANS THROUGH SEVERAL LOANSHARKS WHO MEET HIM AT SECRETS LOUNGE. . . . SOURCE ADVISED THAT THOSE VICTIMS WHO DO NOT MAKE THEIR PAYMENTS ARE THREATENED OR PHYSICALLY BEATEN. SOURCE HAS OVERHEARD CUTOLO DISCUSSING LOANSHARKING MATTERS ON HIS MOBILE PHONE.40
Keep in mind that Greg Scarpa, DeVecchio’s principal source, was engaging in the same kind of violent extortion of loan-shark victims even as he was ratting on Cutolo for doing the same. As far back as 1986, a wiretap in the Wimpy Boys club picked up Scarpa saying, “If I don’t have my money by Thursday, I’ll put him right in the fucking hospital. . . . I wanna break his mother’s face and break his fuckin’ legs and arms.”41
“When it came to collecting on the vig,” said John Orena, “the only difference between Greg and Billy was that Scarpa was the FBI’s inside man.”42 And there’s little doubt that just as Scarpa badmouthed Cutolo to the Feds, he was also spreading poisonous rumors about him throughout the family. It was the same approach he’d used years earlier to denigrate Charlie “the Sidge” LoCicero. And by 1990, Scarpa’s efforts to undermine Cutolo were starting to pay off:
JUNE 12TH, 1990 [SOURCE] ADVISED BILLY CUTOLO HAD BEEN KNOCKED DOWN FROM THE UNDER BOSS POSITION. . . . SOURCE SAID [CARMINE] PERSICO FEARS OTHER MEMBERS INCLUDING CUTOLO OF GAINING TOO MUCH INFLUENCE IN THE FAMILY AND SHUTTING HIM [PERSICO] OUT IN TIME.43
By July 23, Scarpa had furnished the Feds with enough probable cause to renew Title III wiretaps on Cutolo. And by September, Cutolo was forced to withdraw from Teamsters Local 861—based on an affidavit supplied by Lin DeVecchio.44
(Peter Lance)
The Feds seemed so determined to target Cutolo that Scarpa received a payment in September 1991 for three separate “cases,” or operations, for which he was supplying intel. One op was broadly named “Colombo Family,” one focused exclusively on Cutolo, and one bore the curious name “Grand Finale.”45
“That was an interesting designation,” says Flora Edwards, “because the principal theory of defense lawyers after the war was that it had been instigated to install Scarpa as boss, and in the eyes of the Feds that could have represented a final curtain on the Colombos, because they would have had a TECI with a seat on the Commission.”
After Wild Bill Cutolo’s diminishment in the family, the next immediate threat to Scarpa was the acting boss himself, Vic Orena. “It’s important to understand the difference in the culture of the family back then,” said Andrew Orena. “My father is out on Long Island. He’s a nonviolent money-maker who is vehemently anti-drugs, and Scarpa has been making a fortune selling dope since the mid-1980s, when his crew was sent away. Cutolo was one of my father’s strongest capos, along with Nicky Black [Grancio]. Eventually Greg knows that my father is going to have a problem with the violent way he does business, so he starts making moves, using Carmine Sessa to eliminate my dad.”46
Polling the Captains
Perhaps not wanting to admit that he was Scarpa’s pawn in the violent battle about to ensue, Sessa gave a different account of this story—claiming that his change of heart regarding Vic Orena began in 1988, when he was asked to kill consigliere Jimmy Angelina. Testifying at Lin DeVecchio’s trial, Sessa insisted that Vic Orena had asked Angelina to “poll the captains” in the family to see if they still supported Carmine Persico as boss.47
Sessa then claimed that after Angelina took the poll, forces loyal to Orena, including underboss Benny Aloi and Bill Cutolo, asked him to murder Angelina. “Benny Aloi asked me how would [I] feel if Jim Angelina wasn’t around anymore,” Sessa testified.48 Claiming that he voiced no opinion either way, Sessa then confessed that, after one failed attempt, he eventually shot Angelina in the stairwell of a building with Cutolo nearby. After that Vic Orena promoted Sessa to fill Angelina’s shoes as consigliere. Later Sessa claimed that when Orena came to him in 1991 and asked him to poll the captains again, he began to worry. “I didn’t want the same thing to happen to me that happened to Jimmy,” he said.49 That was the Feds’ theory for why Carmine Sessa turned on Vic Orena and started the Colombo war.
But one of the recently released FBI 209s suggests otherwise. In a teletype dated November 29, 1988, DeVecchio says:
Source advised that JIMMY ANGELLINO [sic] was recently “hit” on orders from JUNIOR PERSICO.50
In other words, Angelina’s murder wasn’t Vic Orena’s idea. It was sanctioned by the boss himself: Carmine Persico. In that 209, DeVecchio also reported that “Vic Orena and Benny Aloi were fully aware of the hit.”51 But awareness is a far cry from instigation, and it would have been an act of war in itself if Vic Orena, the acting boss, had unilaterally taken out Carmine Persico’s consigliere without his permission. “The idea that Carmine Sessa suddenly did a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn on Vic Sr. because he was worried about polling the captains doesn’t wash,” argues Flora Edwards. “When Vic asked Sessa to do what Angelina had done, he was simply seeking a vote of confidence from his captains. In no way was he suspicious of Sessa at that point.”
In fact, Sessa later admitted that Orena had suggested he include Teddy Persico in that poll. “If Vic was conspiring to take over the family,” says Edwards, “the last man he’d tell Sessa to brief would be Junior’s own brother. But he wasn’t. That ‘polling’ excuse was what Scarpa Sr. came up with to justify Carmine’s move on Vic.”52
Later the Feds went along, spinning the “polling” story into a purported coup d’état attempt by Orena to bring down Carmine Persico as boss. One of the 302s describing a Sessa debriefing in 1993 says:
SESSA polled Colombo LCN Family Captain THEODORE PERSICO, who was upset that ORENA advocated that CARMINE PERSICO should be removed but told SESSA to continue polling the captains as ORENA had requested. THEORDORE PERSICO resolved to contact his brother, CARMINE PERSICO, and advise him of ORENA’S intentions.53
This second polling of the captains took place on June 14, 1991, at the wedding of Vic Sr.’s son Peter, a civilian—hardly the place one would expect the acting boss to put a plot in motion to take over the family. As recently as June 5, Orena had approved Carmine’s brother Michael as an acting capo.54 So there was no indication at that point that Vic Sr. thought of Carmine Sessa as anything but loyal.55
“At that wedding we noticed that Carmine wasn’t himself,” said Andrew Orena. “But we certainly didn’t think things had reached the point of [his] betraying my father.” In fact, another Sessa 302 notes that “a day or two after Peter Orena’s wedding Sessa met Orena and Orena
Jr. and [Vic Sr.] concluded the meeting by attempting to persuade Sessa that everything would work out and that Sessa had nothing to fear.”56
“But Carmine Sessa was always paranoid,” says Vic Orena Jr. “Who wouldn’t be, after spending years in Scarpa’s crew, when you didn’t know when you walked into Wimpy Boys whether Greg would pull a gun and shoot you dead?”
Joey Ambrosino, a member of that crew, testified that Sessa was so cautious that he used hand gestures to communicate, using a V to represent Vic Orena and three fingers to represent Cutolo, who was missing a finger.57
So despite the assurances from Vic Sr., Carmine Sessa came to believe that there was a plot against him. That “plot” was suggested to him, according to Ambrosino, by “another captain.”
Supposedly, Sessa was going to be invited to an induction ceremony on Friday night, June 21, during which two new members would be “made.” But on the way to that ceremony “he and Richard Fusco [another capo] would be killed.”58 As Andrew Orena asks today: “Who was this capo who put the bug in his ear? There’s little doubt in my mind that it was Scarpa, feeding on Carmine’s paranoia, convincing him that getting a vote of confidence from the captains for my father meant a death sentence for him. It was ridiculous.”
According to one of his FBI debriefings, on or about June 18, 1991, three days before the induction ceremony, Sessa went to Romano’s restaurant in Brooklyn to meet with Cutolo and Grancio, two of Vic Orena’s most loyal captains. During the meeting, Sessa said that acting underboss Joe Scopo had announced that Vincent “Chickie” DeMartino and James “Jimmy O’Toole” Spitaleri would be inducted that Friday, and that Scopo would arrange to have Carmine brought to the ceremony.59 “Of course he was invited,” said John Orena. “Carmine was consigliere and it was natural for him to attend. But the paranoid wheels greased by Scarpa started turning in his head. He left that meeting at Romano’s deciding that he was going to be whacked.”
