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Detectives traded information with Italian police as well as FBI agents stationed in Rome about a wannabe Luchese mobster -- fittingly named Carmine Galante --  who's charged with the stabbing death of Billy Manolis last year on Easter Sunday morning, law enforcement officials told Gang Land.

The Caribinieri, the Guardia di Finanza and the Polizia di Stato are focusing their efforts in Sicily, primarily in the Palermo area, authorities said.

Galante, 23, was named after his uncle, Carmine (Lilo) Galante, onetime  Bonanno family boss. The elder Galante's bloody restaurant execution in 1979 was memorialized by news photos of him with an after-dinner cigar still clenched in his teeth.

"Galante has relatives here and our information indicates he may be here in Italy," a law enforcement official told Gang Land during a weeklong

Galante, a muscular neighborhood bully with three prior arrests dating  back to 1996, allegedly charged into a crowded Bay Ridge, Brooklyn bar minutes before closing and plunged a knife into Manolis' chest.

The killing occurred about an hour after a dispute between Manolis and a teenager who was upset Manolis was speaking to his former girlfriend. She happened to be a relative of a Luchese mobster for whom Galante worked, sources said.

After a few angry words were exchanged, the antagonist left the bar. He returned soon after with Galante, (left) and pointed out Manolis. Galante charged him and stabbed him in the chest, police said.

Meanwhile, murder charges against Rocco Castellano, of Gravesend, who allegedly argued with Manolis and fingered him for his killer, were reduced to misdemeanor assault charges after Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Michael Juviler examined the grand jury minutes and ruled that the prosecution didn't have enough evidence to charge him with murder.

Castellano's lawyer, Alan Abramson, said his client "was not in the bar at the time, is the victim of a misidentification, and will be exonerated." Castellano's case is scheduled for trial next month. 

A select group of Caribinieri officers has asked a court in Sicily to give them the luxurious estate that once belonged to Salvatore (Toto) Riina, the notorious Sicilian Mafia boss they arrested in 1993 after he had eluded them -- and everyone else -- for nearly 25 years.

Riina is now serving a life sentence for the 1992 murder of legendary Anti-Mafia fighter Giovanni Falcone and doesn't need it any more. And they say the sprawling Palermo villa -- which boasts an elevator, guest house and swimming pool -- would make a great recreation center for them!

Hmm. Even If their request is approved, and the idea catches on in the U.S.,  it's probably too late for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White to nail the Mill Neck, L.I. mansion that John A. (Junior) Gotti once called home, and put in some squash courts.

But maybe there's still time for Queens District Attorney Richard Brown to grab the Westbury home of Junior's brother-in-law, Carmine Agnello, the son-in-law of jailed for life Gambino boss John (Dapper Don) Gotti. Or would Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch have first dibs if Agnello's  convicted of  federal racketeering charges?

Like many organized crime racketeering cases, these classic "pump and dump" scams included official corruption charges.

Stephen Gardell, a former NYPD detective and treasurer of the Detective's Endowment Association, allegedly leaked confidential information about mob probes to gangsters, helped them get gun permits and NYPD parking permits in return for cash and other goodies, like a swimming pool, a fur coat and several gambling junkets to Las Vegas and Atlantic City.