And rookie stoolie Anthony Capo (right), a soldier in New Jersey's DeCavalcante crime family, has the prerequisite disposition, background and qualities to become a star cooperating witness -- lots of murders and mayhem and a steadfast determination to save his own hide at the expense of his former friends and associates.

The real-life Soprano will be singing against longtime Gambino gangster Joseph Watts, whose loansharking and money laundering trial starts June 18 in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Capo's appearance will be a trial run before his featured engagement in Manhattan at the murder and racketeering trial of DeCavalcante boss John Riggi and 19 mobsters and associates later this year.  

In between, Capo, 43, is set to testify against three DeCavalcante wiseguys. 

Capo doesn't have the number of murder victims that other celebrated turncoats, like Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano, (19) Carmine Sessa (13) and Alfonse (Little Al) D'Arco (10) accumulated, but not for a lack of effort. Capo has been part of 13 murder plots, at least four that ended in death, according to Gang Land sources.

"He's far from a Little Bo Peep," said one Gang Land source.

During a 20 year career, Capo dealt and used narcotics, committed bank fraud, extortion, assaults, armed robberies, home invasions, stock fraud, labor racketeering, loansharking and gambling, sources said.

Capo, who admits plotting a hit with Watts, will testify only about the lucrative loansharking racket that allegedly earned Watts more than $12 million between 1986 and 1994. Watts recently completed a six year sentence for a murder plot but has been detained as a danger to society while he awaits trial.

Federal prosecutors Daniel Dorsky and Andrew Genser hope Capo will help

The prosecutors claim that Watts fixed that case, as Gang Land reported last month, but a law enforcement source conceded that "there are some problems with Fat Dom" and that Capo's testimony "should help the case."

The prosecutors undoubtedly hope that Capo demonstrates more intelligence on the witness stand than the stupidity he exhibited during a murder plot in which he, Watts and Borghese were all allegedly involved -- the Sept. 11, 1989 rubout of Staten Island businessman Fred Weiss. Gambino boss John Gotti had ordered the execution, and after several failures by his men, DeCavalcante mobsters, including Capo, got the job done.

Watts (left) told Borghese, according to an FBI report obtained by Gang Land, "that Capo, who lived in the South Beach area of Staten Island ...used his own car in carrying out the hit. This was confirmed when the police were provided with a partial plate number that was similar to Capo's."

Watts, who suffers chronic back problems, got some relief last month when Judge David Trager ordered the Metropolitan Detention Center to allow him to wear "Nike Shox sneakers with blue 'Sorbo' innersoles."

Gambino capo Salvatore (Fat Sally) Scala (right) and soldier Charles Carneglia face 20 years in prison for conspiring to extort the owner of an adult video store from January through June of 2000.

Scala was one of the "shooters" in the execution of Paul Castellano and Carneglia was involved in the retribution murder of a man who killed 12-year-old Frank Gotti, youngest son of John Gotti, in a car accident in 1980, according to court papers.

They were convicted after a four week trial at which assistant U.S. attorneys Andrew Genser and Leonard Lato played numerous tape recordings of their accomplices threatening the owner of Cherry's Video Store in Lake Ronkonkoma, L.I. for $300-a-week payments for the jury. Scala and

There was no concrete evidence that Scala and Carneglia received any money but one law enforcement official familiar with the case estimated that each took home $50.

"It could have been a couple bucks more or less, but that's a good number," the source said.

The accomplices, as well as Bonanno capo Thomas DiFiore, pleaded guilty before trial.

The convictions were doubly distressing because the gangsters thought they had beaten the case. The jury acquitted them of racketeering and a very similar extortion charge involving Cherry's Video in the first two counts of the indictment. When it pronounced them guilty of extortion conspiracy in a third count, they gasped, then quickly composed themselves.

Their attorneys, Joseph Corozzo and Bruce Barkett, are expected to appeal. They could not be reached for comment last night.