By Jerry Capeci

Dorothy Fiorenza, a willowy raven-haired lawyer -- she had been a blonde but dyed her hair at the suggestion of an FBI agent for security reasons, she said -- told how she and Russo became lovers after they met at a 1994 Christmas party. She said Russo sent her a message that Russo thought "I was the best thing since baked bread or sliced bread."

A beauty school graduate -- before law school -- Fiorenza, 32, testified at length about her relationships with various gangsters, their wives and their mistresses.

She had worked at a Queens barbershop frequented by gangsters and said she was unhappily married at the time. Russo had been back on the streets for five months after an eight year federal prison stretch and soon became her lover.

They dined at fancy restaurants in Manhattan and Long Island, frequented at Elaine's, a celebrity watering hole on the Upper East Side, did Broadway, including "Phantom of the Opera," and had love trysts in the country during a whirlwind affair that ended in July, 1995.

Russo, 33 years her senior, referred to them as "the gangster and the lawyer," she said.

In videotapes played for the Brooklyn Federal Court jury, Russo and Fiorenza are dancing the cha cha, Russo is shooting pool as a blonde Fiorenza looks on lovingly, and in a third, singer Laine Kazan is seen sitting on a couch and actor James Caan, an old Russo friend and frequent attendee at his 1986 racketeering trial, is playing the piano.

Russo is charged with trying to tamper with an alternate juror who sat on the racketeering case of his son, Joseph (JoJo) Russo, who was convicted in April, 1994. The elder Russo, along with codefendant Dennis Hickey, (left) is also  charged with obstructing an FBI jury tampering investigation  by getting his son's girlfriend, Teresa Castronova, to dodge a federal grand jury subpoena from May, 1994 through July, 1995.

The FBI began looking for Castronova after the juror told the trial judge that she recognized Castronova, a schoolmate from her high school days, as a daily spectator, and reported that a private investigator had tried to contact her about the case after the verdict.

Fiorenza testified that Russo and Hickey hid Castronova at Hickey's Long Island farm where she and Russo had often spent the weekend. She said she also carried messages between him and his son, who at the time was confined at the Manhattan Correctional Center, as well as love letters from Castronova.

She said she witnessed a screaming match between Joseph Russo's wife and his girlfriend, and after she fell out with Castronova, withheld a love letter to Joseph Russo that was introduced as evidence at trial.

Gradually, her relationship with Andrew Russo soured and she fell in love with Lawrence Fiorenza, a codefendant of Russo's son whom she met at MCC.  With the help of a friendly prison guard -- she said she didn't bribe him -- they had sex at the jail and were maried there in April, 1996.

A year later, claiming she was afraid of Russo after her marriage to his underling, she and her new husband began cooperating with federal prosecutors.

"Her convoluted story is nothing but a last ditch effort to get her husband out of prison,'' said Russo's lawyer, George Santangelo, noting that Russo was in jail when the juror's family was contacted in May 1994.

Santangelo, and Hickey's lawyer, James LaRossa, said their clients violated no laws and argued that Castronova had ducked the FBI because she believed that the FBI had framed Joseph Russo.

The trial is expected to conclude this week.

White Plains Federal Judge Barrington Parker is due to set a firm trial date tomorrow for the pared down racketeering trial of John A. (Junior) Gotti  currently scheduled for next month.

Gotti and capo Salvatore (Tore) Locascio (right) -- whose fathers were convicted together and jailed for life in 1992 -- are the only mobsters remaining in the case that had dozens of defendants when  filed a year ago.

Ailing and aging Gambino soldier Gregory DePalma pleaded guilty to racketeering charges while lying in a Westchester County prison hospital bed breathing through an oxygen tank.

In a makeshift courtroom, DePalma, 66, (left) admitted conspiring "with a group of individuals" to shake down the upscale Manhattan strip joint, Scores, evading taxes and engaging in loansharking and illegal gambling.

Suffering from diabetes, lung and prostrate cancer, DePalma agreed to plead out and face 10 years in jail in the hopes of lightening punishment for his son and codefendant, Craig, said defense attorney John Mitchell.

Craig, 32, (right) also a reputed soldier, pleaded guilty in White Plains Federal Court an hour later, admitting to extortion and other charges that could net him seven years in jail.

In exchange for the pleas, federal prosecutors agreed to drop charges that the DePalmas hatched a murder plot to avenge the 1996 shooting of a Scores bouncer and waiter.

Gregory DePalma -- who appeared in an infamous backstage photo with Frank Sinatra that was the focus of Gang Land's first contest -- will not be testifying against Gotti, but prosecutors plan to use his tape recorded words against the reputed acting boss.

During the investigation, investigators with the state Organized Crime Task Force planted a bug inside the bedroom of DePalma's Scarsdale home. He was caught boasting of his links to the Gambino family's jailed boss and the son who serves as his father's acting boss.

DePalma implicates Junior in numerous crimes, including loansharking and the shakedown of Scores.

In a June 8, 1995 discussion with son Craig, DePalma quoted Junior, who has denied any involvement with Scores, as saying he was "going to throw out" the manager of the club.

On Mar. 13, 1995, DePalma instructed others to leave a parcel in his mailbox, not on his stoop, because, "I don't like to leave them outside for the mailman, John Gotti shit."

Two days before the DePalma pleas, as Gang Land predicted last week, capos John (Jackie Nose) D'Amico and Louis Ricco, and soldier Mario Antonicelli, resolved their cases with plea bargains.

One entry per person, via e-mail. The simplest way is to list your answers from No. 1 through No. 13. Anyone caught making more than one submission will be rubbed out along with their entry.

Previous contest winners, employees of Gang Land and the Daily News and their families, are ineligible to win a prize, but can still play along for the hell  of it. In case of ties, winners will be selected at random.

The deadline is Sunday, Jan. 31.

First prize is a copy of "Gotti: Rise & Fall," autographed, of course, by yours truly and co-author Gene Mustain. Incidentally, Gene submitted an entry to Contest #5 and signed his infant son's name. Luckily, we caught on to the scam, and will return Mustain's wife and child to him after the deadline to this contest.

Second prize is a similarly autographed copy of Murder Machine: A True Story of Murder, Madness and The Mafia.

Each question is worth one point. For those with problems in arithmetic, a perfect score is 13. And there's no penalty for a bad guess. Good luck.

During the 1963 Senate Hearings, which featured the testimony of  celebrated turncoat Joe Valachi, (right) several mobsters who were, or would eventually become Mafia bosses, were associated with the wrong crime families.

          Match the boss with the incorrect family in which he was placed.