By Jerry Capeci

Pontillo, by way of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, is doing 13 years for racketeering, loansharking, gun possession and murder conspiracy. Many of the people he grew up with, many of his friends, are in jail.

After a couple of years of vying for a spot in the Colombo family -- and six years in the joint -- Pontillo  says he's going legit. He's written a screenplay, "Price of Blood," that has captured the attention of a few people in the movie business. Pontillo is thinking Hollywood.

It wouldn't be the first time he's been bitten by the movie bug. In 1991, he had a bit part in "Out for Justice," a Steven Seagal shoot-em-up. "I'm the big guy in the pool room scene," said the slimmed-down Pontillo, who has shed 75 pounds since then.

From 1989 to 1992, he performed in clubs in New York and New Jersey as the heavy half of a 2-man rap group called, appropriately enough, The Mob. Their stage names were Frankie Steel and 9-millimeter Mike. (That's Frankie on the left in this photo.)

As the Colombo war heated up in 1991 and 1992, Frankie, at the time an up-and-coming gangster, did his best to keep his gangster life separate from his budding career as an entertainer.

But on Sept. 12, 1992, three months after he escaped an FBI dragnet that had snared several gangster cohorts, his two worlds collided.   The Mob was shooting a music video at a restaurant across the street from Sugar Hill Records in Englewood, N.J. to help promote their first single, "86th Street."

"It was about the main drag in Bensonhurst, the place to be,'' said Pontillo. "The first week the song came out it was number 23 on the new release charts. But I was in jail when it happened." (Frankie's on the right on the record cover.)

Tipped by the FBI, Englewood police raided the restaurant and nabbed Pontillo as he tried to escape through a kitchen exit that turned into a dead end.  The music was still playing  and video cameras kept rolling.

"We were in the middle of a sitdown scene when they came in like gangbusters," said Joe Catalfumo, an actor who was playing a New York mob don resolving a dispute with a California mob boss in the video.

"The show went on. It was wild. The cameras are going, and we finish the sitdown scene and walk over to the bar and Frankie was running away and the FBI (actually cops) is chasing him," said Catalfumo.

Catalfumo said it was unfortunate that Frankie landed in jail, but is glad it ended his hoodlum days.

"Frankie's a good kid. He just got caught up with that gangster crap, started to emulate the wrong guys. Now he's on track, turned his life around," he said. "And I like the script. Frankie wrote me into the screen play - a nice role."

Price of Blood is based on Pontillo's experiences as a wannabe mobster hanging around the Wimpy Boys Social Club on 13th Ave., the onetime headquarters of the late Greg Scarpa Sr., (right) a Colombo capo who was a top echelon informer for the FBI for 30 years. 

Back in Allenwood, where Pontillo owes another five years, Frankie Steel isn't looking back.

"I have another screenplay that I'm working on," said Pontillo. "It's almost finished and ready to go. I have a couple of other ideas, one about a woman hit man called 'The Cleaner.' "

I don't know, Frankie. I might have that one on HBO.

If you're interested in contacting Pontillo about "Price of Blood," "The Cleaner," or some other legitimate undertaking, please write him, not me.

Frank Pontillo #40243-053
LSCI Allenwood Office
P.O. Box 1000
White Deer, PA 17887

With jurors hung 10-2 for conviction, Torres declared a mistrial in the slayings of Scores bouncer Michael Greco and waiter Jonathan Segal after the shouting from the jury room got louder and louder during the panel's fourth day of deliberations.

"It was very emotional," said juror Joseph White, one of two holdouts for acquittal after the Dedaj brothers had been escorted back to their cells after the mistrial was declared. "They wanted to rip our heads off."

Prosecutors allege that Simon, 35, shot and killed Segal and Greco, execution style, after an early morning dispute in the Upper East Side strip joint on June 21, 1996, and that Victor, 39, (left) helped kill Segal.

Three witnesses, including Willie Marshall, a former strong arm associate of accused Gambino family acting boss John A. (Junior) Gotti, testified that the Dedaj brothers killed the men.

Prosecutor Dan McGillicuddy also played an   account of the killings tape recorded by the state Organized Crime Task Force during a telephone conversation between Marshall and his brother Joe that same day. 

"Simon. He was there and .... you know, his brother was there .... So when they were leaving, he fucking just shot them," said Willie.

Marshall's taped account -- made two years before he began cooperating with the feds -- convinced 10 jurors that the brothers were guilty of murder, said foreman Dennis Ruiz, adding that the jury opted not to compromise and return a lesser conviction of manslaughter.

"It's better to give another 12 people a shot," said Ruiz.

Last weekend, the jury had acquitted the brothers of burglary and related charges. Torres is expected to set a date for a retrial on the murder charges later this week.

They used to be mobsters. Now, they're acting like prosecutors.

Frank (Frankie Fapp) Fappiano has been locked up in the Metropolitan Correctional Center for five days on the say so of former Gambino underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano (right) and Luchese mobster Frank Gioia Jr.

They say Fappiano is a hitman.

The two mob turncoats, who say they have never met, have both linked him to the Aug. 8, 1990 gangland-style rubout of contractor Edward Garofalo in front of his Bensonhurst, Brooklyn home.

Fappiano, 36, was busted for allegedly dealing marijuana, but detained as a danger to the community last week after the feds determined that he was the wheelman in the hit.

Citing information from Gravano and Gioia (without naming him), assistant U.S. attorney James Walden charged in court papers that Fappiano was on the hit team that killed Garofalo. According to Gioia,  Fappiano drove the getaway car and Danny Fama, another mob associate, was the triggerman in the slaying, which was ordered by Gambino boss John Gotti (left) and supervised by Gravano.

Sammy Bull told the FBI he proposed  Fappiano for induction into the crime family for his good work in the killing. Interestingly, Garofalo's daughters, Laura and Karen, have filed a wrongful death suit only against Gravano.

Attorney James DiPietro protested that his client has never been charged with a crime of violence, but Fappiano has been cooling his heels in the MCC since last Wednesday. He is expected to be released today under strict house arrest conditions after he posts a $500,000 bond. Neither Fama, who's doing 20 years for drug dealing, or Fappiano are defendants in the wrongful death suit, which doesn't name Gotti, who ordered the killing.

First prize is a copy of  "Gotti: Rise & Fall," autographed by yours truly and co-author Gene Mustain. Second prize is a similarly autographed copy of "Murder Machine: A True Story of Murder, Madness and The Mafia."

We'll be unveiling another contest next week.

In recent days, we've received a lot of queries about legendary New York gangster Joseph Bonanno, who, according to the latest reports from Arizona, is in his 90's and still going strong.

Bonanno, who headed one of New York's five Cosa Nostra Families when the Mafia's current organizational structure was formed in 1931 until 1964 or so, hasn't had anything to do with the crime family that bears his name for more than thirty years. And neither have any members of his family.

Back in the early 1960's, many Mafia bosses, including Carlo Gambino, (left) felt Bonanno was getting too powerful. Bonanno's cousin, Stefano Magaddino, (right) boss of the Buffalo family, helped Gambino block one of Bonanno's allies from attaining the leadership of another New York Family to keep him from wielding too much influence on the Commission, the Mafia's ruling body, or Board of Directors. Bonanno tried to retaliate, but his plots against his enemies failed. In 1964, Bonanno was deposed by the Commission and in 1968 (after a few bodies dropped) he retired to Arizona when he realized he was outnumbered and outgunned.

Since then, Bonanno (right) has had little to do with the mob except for some clandestine communication with a few select mobsters. His comeback was only in his dreams, and those of a few conspiracy theory-loving FBI agents. Agents in Arizona, who examined his garbage under a microscope, floated stories that he was the real power behind Cosa Nostra, citing his many telephone calls around the country. They even suckered Penthouse Magazine into printing an article about it. Trouble was, that Bonanno's name or voice never came up on the FBI's many wiretaps and he was never mentioned by informers. And the turncoat mobsters barely mentioned him.

But the FBI persisted and finally nailed him for obstruction of justice, penny ante charges involving his efforts to hide business records of his sons, whose businesses had gone belly up. It was rinky dink stuff and had nothing to do with the mob, although some writers made it look like it was an attempt by Bonanno to move into California to replace his lost New York empire.

The late FBI agent/author Bill Roemer, who left Chicago and moved to Arizona as he neared retirement, perpetuated the myth, portraying Bonanno as a lasting Cosa Nostra power, since an agent of his stature wouldn't bother going after a washed up old man. Roemer perpetuated the nonsense by writing a fictional account of Bonanno trying to take over Las Vegas. A very careful reading of the book confirms it as fiction, but   many readers believed it was fact. A son of a former Bonanno capo wrote us an angry letter outlining how Roemer placed his dad into mob events that occurred years after he had died.

Salvatore (Bill)  Bonanno, a son who has been milking the Bonanno name for years, also keeps the legend alive. Last we heard he was working on a television movie based on his dad's book, "Joe Bonanno: A Man of Honor." Not too long ago, lower union wages and Canadian government incentives brought the production to the icy north in Montreal. The movie is due out later this year. We make no promises about the movie, but Bonanno's book is a pretty good read. "Honor Thy Father," by Gay Talese, is recognized as a Mafia classic.