by Peter Lance
And so, acting either on his own or at Scarpa’s behest, Sessa decided to make a “preemptive strike.” On June 20, 1991, the night before the induction ceremony was scheduled to take place, he drove to Cedarhurst, Long Island, with one of his fellow Scarpa crew members, Bobby Zambardi. Along with another capo, John Pate, they headed toward Stella’s Restaurant, which Vic Orena frequented. The plan was to follow him when he left, link with another car full of shooters, and “take him out.” As Sessa later explained at Lin DeVecchio’s trial, “I felt at that induction ceremony they were going to kill me. So we decided to kill Vic Orena first.”60
Chapter 25
PEARL HARBOR
Carmine Sessa’s coup d’état attempt involved two hit teams. In a plot that seemed derived from the final scene in The Godfather, Sessa planned to decapitate the family leadership, killing not just Vic Orena but underboss Joe Scopo in simultaneous hits that would take place miles apart. If successful, those parallel strikes would have left Sessa—the family’s number three official—as the effective street boss of the Colombos, or at least the figurehead if Greg Scarpa was pulling the strings. As we detail the plans for this two-pronged attack, keep in mind that Sessa—who was not known for strategic thinking—purportedly put the complex operation together in less than forty-eight hours after deciding on June 18, with little basis in fact, that he would have to kill or be killed.
“Joey Brains” Ambrosino, another Wimpy Boys crew member and Scarpa surrogate, said that at around noon on Thursday, June 20, he got beeped by Carmine’s brother Michael, who told him to come to his house. The Sessa brothers were waiting there, along with Colombo associate Lefty Sangiorgio. Ambrosino said that Carmine told him he “needed some help”—that he had to “murder some people that night.”1
The plan was for them to meet capo John Pate and some of his crew members at seven P.M. and split into teams. Carmine Sessa, Pate, and Zambardi would make up the surveillance detail. Once they located Orena, they would contact an armed “backup team”2 consisting of Michael Sessa, Sangiorgio, and members of Pate’s crew. This second team would then go into action and “do the work.”
Meanwhile, a third team of shooters would target Scopo, who frequented Turquoise, a Brooklyn club, on Thursday nights.3 “Our plan was to kill Joey Scopo when he left Turquoise and at the same time, Carmine, Bob, and Johnny Pate and their crews were going to murder Vic Orena,” Ambrosino testified.4
As a federal prosecutor later noted, however, “the plan was a complete disaster. It didn’t come off.”5 After driving around for more than five hours searching in vain for Orena,6 Sessa’s recon team was stopped at a traffic light in Floral Park, Long Island, when Vic Orena happened to pull up next to them in his Mercedes.7 He’d left Stella’s Restaurant and was on his way home to nearby Cedarhurst, alone and unarmed. Sessa, Pate, and Zambardi were all wearing baseball caps to obscure their identities. But when they looked over and saw the acting boss in the lane next to them, they quickly peeled off to the left as the light changed, and Orena sped forward.8
According to Vic Jr., his father normally drove a Lincoln but that night he was in a Benz that had recently been driven up from Florida. “When he saw these guys, who were all Scarpa minions,” said Vic Jr., “he knew at that moment they were up to no good.”9
“We were hoping that he didn’t identify us,” the hapless Sessa later testified. “But it appeared that he did.”10
Within minutes, Orena had made it safely home. “As soon as my father got on the phone, he called me because his first fear was that I was gone,” said Vic Jr. “That they’d hit me and John. So he said, ‘Check with your brother. I’m gonna meet you at the house.’”
At that same moment, in Brooklyn, Ambrosino waited at a diner with Michael Sessa and three other crew members, including Frank Farace, Greg Scarpa’s “cousin” by marriage and the uncle of the murderous Gus Farace. Hank Smurra, who worked at Turquoise, arrived to inform them that Scopo hadn’t shown up at the club that night.
“So me and Michael drove to [Scopo’s] home,” said Ambrosino. “His car was in the driveway.” Realizing that they’d lost the opportunity to kill the underboss, they beeped Carmine Sessa, who told them how “Vic Orena had got home early, and they got spotted.”
Back on Long Island, Vic Sr. assessed the situation with his two sons. “Once we knew his house was safe,” said John, “my father sent everybody else in the family out to Montauk because this was an act of war. From that moment on, nothing for us was ever the same.”11
“Sessa, Zambardi, and Ambrosino were all Scarpa’s [crew],” added Vic Jr. “There is no way Carmine would have made a hit attempt like this without clearing it with somebody more powerful in the family. We know he didn’t ask Junior Persico, so he was following orders from somebody else. He’d been Greg’s boy since he first joined the Wimpys crew in the early 1980s. Greg had sponsored him for membership in the family. Now we realize that we’re dealing with the Grim Reaper. He wants my father dead. He wants Joe Scopo gone. And we never saw it coming.”
“Believe me,” said Andrew, “if my dad had suspected for a second that there was a problem, or if he’d actually planned to take out Carmine at that induction ceremony, do you think he’d be driving home alone? Unarmed? No way. For us this was Pearl Harbor.”
To the Mattresses in Jersey
After the aborted hit attempt, Carmine Sessa and the various crews took off for New Jersey and went into hiding. They stayed first at a Holiday Inn, where they were joined by Teddy Persico; then they moved to a nearby Hilton, trying to assess the fallout.12 An FBI 302 memorializing a Sessa debriefing detailed what happened next:
SESSA, PATE, and ZAMBARDI all realized there was no explanation for their presence near ORENA’s house, and they were all in serious trouble.13
But rather than demanding retribution or escalating the conflict, Vic Orena sought to defuse it by appealing to the Commission, which was created, in part, to resolve such internecine disputes. “Right away my father wanted the other families to intervene,” said Vic Jr. A meeting was held at a Manhattan hotel, attended by representatives of the Genovese, Lucchese, and Gambino families. (At that time, the Bonanno family had been ostracized by the Commission.) According to an FBI 302 on one of Sessa’s debriefings, Little Al D’Arco represented the Luccheses and John Gotti Jr. was among three capos from the Gambinos.14
Vic Orena met with the Commission representatives first and Carmine Sessa followed him. Given Sessa’s unsanctioned unilateral infraction, when it came time for him to face the impromptu tribunal, he agreed that he would step down as consigliere if asked. After a number of Colombo captains were interviewed, it became clear at that point that the family had now broken into two factions, so the Commission ordered a truce prohibiting any killing. As Sessa later admitted to FBI agents, “all the families would attack anyone who broke the truce.”15
At Orena’s trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissmann insisted that Vic was now the aggressor. “Vic Orena was very quick to run to the other families and to tell them that there was this plot to kill him,” he said. “He wanted to get their support so that he could be declared the official boss. He also wanted their permission to kill the members of the Colombo Family who had aligned themselves with Junior Persico.”16
But the Orena sons insist that just the opposite was happening. “We went into a totally defensive position,” said Vic Jr. “I didn’t even know how to handle a gun. I literally had to buy a gun book and read it, to learn how to fire a shotgun. We didn’t carry handguns because the FBI and NYPD were arresting people who were packing, so we just did our best to protect our homes and our families. In no way did my father authorize anything aggressive. There’s no way we were going to break the peace.”17
“Meanwhile, throughout that summer,” said John, “guys were reaching out to us from the other side and we’d meet and they were telling us, ‘We don’t want a war.’ We were hopin’ that, whatever happened, the FBI would step in to stop
any violence before it started.”18
In fact, a month after the attempt on his life, Vic Sr. attended a wake with sixty to seventy members of the family, at which he urged those bent on violence “to come in.”19 The meeting took place in a side room at a funeral home during the wake of “Joe Sap” Saponaro, whose brother John had died of natural causes the previous March.20 Scarpa Sr. himself actually attended that wake, and Orena, the trusting acting boss, never catching on that Greg was the agent provocateur behind the war, interpreted his presence as a positive sign.
But as “Joey Brains” Ambrosino later testified, Scarpa was “just being a spy for the Persicos” and “made believe that he was aligned with” the Orenas.
Keep in mind that Scarpa, the chess master, wasn’t just the principal instigator in the war, he was also the principal interpreter of events for the FBI. As such he was able to get his contacting agent Lin DeVecchio to spin the “intelligence” from his self-serving point of view. On August 13, DeVecchio sent the following 209 to Washington, painting Vic Orena as the aggressor, bent on assuming “full control” of the family, and quoting his “source,” Scarpa, as stating that “the logical move” for the Persico side would be “to take out VIC ORENA.”
ON AUGUST 13, 1991, SOURCE ADVISED THAT “LITTLE VIC” ORENA IS TRYING TO ASSUME FULL CONTROL OF THE COLOMBO LCN FAMILY BY HAVING CARMINE PERSICO RELIEVED OF HIS POSITION AS BOSS. THIS HAS CAUSED A MAJOR DIVISION WITHIN THE FAMILY. . . .
THE SOURCE SAID CARMINE SESSA HAS ALSO BEEN REPLACED BY VINNIE ALOI AS ACTING CONSIGLIERE, AND JOEY SCOPO IS ACTING UNDERBOSS. THE SOURCE NOTED HOWEVER THAT ACCORDING TO LCN TRADITION, THERE ARE ONLY THREE WAYS TO CHANGE A FAMILY BOSS: 1) BY DEATH (PERSICO IS IN PRISON); 2) BY THE BOSS VOLUNTARILY STEPPING DOWN (NOT LIKELY IN PERSICO’S CASE); AND BY A VOTE OF THE COMMISSION TO RELIEVE THE BOSS.
THE SOURCE SAID VIC ORENA IS EXPECTING THE OTHER FAMILIES TO BACK HIM, HOWEVER, THE OTHER FAMILY BOSSES ARE NOT GOING TO DEPOSE A JAILED BOSS SINCE ALL THE FAMILY BOSSES ARE CURRENTLY IN JAIL, PLUS CARMINE PERSICO HAS ALREADY PUT OUT THE ORDER TO HAVE VIC ORENA HIT. THE SOURCE SAID THE LOGICAL MOVE WOULD BE TO TAKE OUT VIC ORENA AND BENNY AND VINNIE ALOI, AND LEAVE THE POSITION OF BOSS OPEN UNTIL “LITTLE ALLEY” [sic] PERSICO IS RELEASED FROM PRISON.
THE SOURCE SAID THE FOLLOWING ARE SIDING WITH ORENA:
JOEY SCOPO
NICKY GRANCIO
TOMMY PETRIZZO
PATTY AMATO
VINNIE ALOI
BILLY CUTOLO
CHARLEY PANARELLA21
Vic Orena’s two strongest allies in that group were Nicky Black Grancio and William Cutolo. At that point, several months after Sessa’s botched hit attempt, having been unable to give the FBI enough intelligence to indict Cutolo, the Orena brothers contend that Scarpa conspired to eliminate “Billy Fingers” by force.
The Move on Wild Bill
Larry Mazza, who was Greg Scarpa’s principal killing partner, later testified that Scarpa had outfitted a special station wagon with hidden compartments for a rifle and other guns. Senior also used a van. At some point in the early fall, he started trolling the streets of Brooklyn looking for targets.22
According to Mazza, Scarpa had two informants inside Cutolo’s crew: Joseph “Joe Legs” Legrano and Robert D’Onofrio. Mazza testified that they “would call” Scarpa “from time to time telling the things that were talked about in Billy’s club.”23
“Billy lived near Greg,” said Vic Jr., “and on the road one day he sees Scarpa layin’ down in a car with a gun. So he bolts from the spot. He isn’t armed at the time. But the car goes after him. There’s a chase through the streets of Brooklyn, but Billy gets away.”
“A few days later,” said John, “this kid who drives Billy around is walkin’ down the street and Scarpa, who is in a vehicle, sees him. The kid is on foot. He doesn’t have anything on him. No protection and he’s not a tough guy. But Greg chases him with the car for three blocks. The kid is scared to death. Finally he runs up on somebody’s stoop and starts poundin’ on the door, and the car pulls away. They tried another two or three times to make a move on this kid. So now Billy is thinkin’ to himself that if he doesn’t stop Scarpa, Scarpa’s gonna stop him.”24
In the spring of 2011, while promoting his book, Lin DeVecchio recited the conventional wisdom that it was the “Orena faction” that “fomented the war.”25 He told a radio talk show host, “The war actually started with [an] attempt to kill Scarpa, because he was a feared member of the Persico faction and the Orena faction really wanted him out of the way. So on November eighteenth they tried to kill him as he was leaving his house.”
William Cutolo is credited by the Feds with engineering that “attack” on November 18, and as we’ll see, serious questions have been raised about its very legitimacy. But before we get there, it’s important to examine the various 209 reports that Lin DeVecchio filed in the weeks leading up to that incident.
On October 9, quoting Scarpa as his source, DeVecchio sent a memo to his FBI superiors that clearly painted Vic Orena Sr. as the principal antagonist in the Colombo family conflict. But in fact the evidence suggests that Orena was going out of his way to stop the conflict short of violence. On October 6, Orena actually went to Teddy Persico’s house to discuss resolving the split, accompanied by his sons Victor and John, underboss Benny Aloi, and three other capos, including Nicky Grancio. For Orena to visit Persico’s turf on a peace mission was a clear gesture of conciliation.26
At that time, Orena claimed up to one hundred made members of the family versus twenty-five to thirty who were supporting Persico.27 He was in such a strong position that he should have been able to resolve the conflict without bloodshed. A war would threaten the earning power of every associate, soldier, and captain. “Blood was bad for business,” said Andrew Orena, “and most of the people in the family knew what a good businessman my father had been. So why risk all that?”28
But Lin DeVecchio, passing on Scarpa’s intel, described the meeting this way:
The source said Teddy PERSICO opened the meeting by asking Benny ALOI if those members backing VIC ORENA recognized CARMINE PERSICO as the COLOMBO Boss. ALOI said PERSICO was regarded as a Boss, but VIC ORENA speaks for the COLOMBO Family. At that point Teddy PERSICO said that CARMINE PERSICO was the official boss, and not ORENA, and demanded all the money that the PERSICO’s [sic] should have gotten over the past several years that had gone to ORENA.29
According to DeVecchio’s 209, “The ORENA faction said that they were there to resolve any differences and that a meeting should take place.” But the memo went on to describe the inflexible stance taken by the “PERSICO faction.”
TEDDY PERSICO said that until that side recognized CARMINE PERSICO as the official boss, and ORENA would no longer be the acting boss, there would be no further discussions.30
Again, this was Scarpa Sr.’s take on the conflict. The FBI was getting most of its intelligence on the war from its principal antagonist, who by now was an expert at playing his Bureau handlers. So now, ever the tactician, “34” added a new element to the equation: John Gotti.
Since 1987, “getting Gotti” had been the “top investigative priority” of the FBI’s New York Office,31 and dozens of Scarpa’s debriefing reports contained dirt on the Gambino boss. Now, on October 9, 1991, a second 209 filed by Lin raised an ominous new prospect: that Vic Orena was really just a Gotti pawn. As noted, the Feds would advance that premise during Vic Sr.’s 1992 trial, arguing that one of the principal motives for the Tommy Ocera hit was Orena’s desire to appease Gotti—a theory that was later entirely discredited.
But now, in the fall of 1991, sourcing Scarpa, DeVecchio filed a report with Washington suggesting that the “Dapper Don” was taking sides in the Colombo war.
On October 9, 1991, advised SSA R. LINDLEY DE VECCHIO that JOHN GOTTI has circulated a list of approximately twenty-five (25) COLOMBO members loyal to CARMINE PERSICO, and advised all GAMBINO members to have no contact in business or otherwise with the
se individuals. The source said as a result of this list all COLOMBO members so mentioned who have illegal activities together with GAMBINO members, are now keeping the proceeds of these businesses, and not sharing them in their respective counterparts.32
On November 4 DeVecchio went further, suggesting (per Scarpa) that Gotti was actually using Orena in a plot to take over the entire Colombo family—a goal that defies belief, given the long-established five-family structure of the Mafia Commission.
On November 4, 1991 advised SSA R. LINDLEY DE VECCHIO that . . . GAMBINO Boss JOHN GOTTI has been manipulating ORENA for a long time and is anxious to have this dispute resolved in ORENA’s favor so he can assume control of the COLOMBO Family’s activities.33
But that 209 is even more telling for another reason: In it, “34” names himself as a possible Orena target and states that William Cutolo would be a “likely victim” from the Orena faction:
The source noted that JOEY SCOPO and possibly BILLY CUTOLO would be likely victims on the ORENA side, and that CARMINE SESSA and GREG SCARPA, SR. would be the ORENA’s side pick to be hit.
After threatening Cutolo for many weeks, Scarpa seemed to be setting the stage now for the “attack” outside his house on November 18 that DeVecchio later claimed had “fomented” the war. But Scarpa made another allegation in that November 4 report, suggesting that the Cutolo attack wasn’t the first violent outbreak in the conflict. According to Scarpa, the initial bloodshed came two weeks earlier with the murder of Giachino “Jack” Leale, one of the killers of Tommy Ocera. In that same 209, Scarpa blames Vic Orena for Leale’s rubout:
On November 4th, 1991 SOURCE advised that the recent hit on JACK LEALE was done by the Orena Faction of the COLOMBO family. . . . The SOURCE said LEALE was obviously set up by somebody he trusted.34
