Mob turncoat Michael (Cookie) D’Urso is four-for-four as a prosecution witness but the smooth talking songbird is looking to ring in the New Year with a winning performance in a case that means more to him than any of the others. 

D’Urso is primed to testify at the Jan. 6 racketeering trial of  longtime Genovese family rival, Carmelo (Carmine Pizza) Polito, (left) who is charged with the attempted murder of D’Urso, and the murder of D’Urso’s cousin Tino Lombardi, on Nov. 30, 1994.

Ironically, Gang Land has learned, two hoods who took part in the plot – including one who shot D’Urso in the head and left him for dead – have agreed to join D’Urso as prosecution witnesses and testify that Carmine Pizza set the murder plot in motion.

Law enforcement sources say the triggerman, who also fired a few of the fatal shots into Lombardi, and another accomplice who was in a Brooklyn social club when the bullets started flying, have secretly pleaded guilty and have agreed to cooperate.

Polito, 43, allegedly plotted to kill D’Urso and Lombardi to wipe out a $60,000 gambling debt he owed them, and to eliminate the need for Polito to pay off the debt to get permission to move to another crew. Polito cronies Mario Fortunato, (below right) 55, and John Imbrieco, ( left) 40, are codefendants in the case.

To date, D’Urso’s three years of undercover work for the FBI – from 1998 to 2001 – has led to guilty pleas by 44 mobsters and associates. Throughout the probe, the

tough talking ex-con was often overheard asking mob superiors for permission to take out Polito.

Invariably, D’Urso, 34, justified his efforts to whack Polito as appropriate street justice for Polito’s moves to kill him on Nov. 30, 1994. Sources say, however, that D’Urso actually triggered the rubout effort by setting Polito up for a robbery a few months earlier as they were playing cards at the San Giuseppe social club in Williamsburg.

Polito, who was shot in the leg in the first encounter, quickly determined that D’Urso was behind it, a deduction that law enforcement officials grudgingly concede was correct. So, after nursing his wounds, sources said, Polito orchestrated a fitting payback against D'Urso at the same social club on Nov. 30, 1994.

About a year later, D’Urso moved the battle to the Polito family pizzeria in Astoria, Queens. As Polito was making pizza – sources say he was in between bank robberies and casing the bank next store – he was shot in the head by a D’Urso crony sent to even the score.

Even though D’Urso instigated the shootings – and out shot Polito 2-1 – assistant U.S. attorneys Dan Dorsky and Todd Harrison have no intention of giving Carmine Pizza a pass, although they have abandoned the idea of seeking the death penalty against him.

“This is another one of those unfortunate cases,” said Polito’s lawyer Gerald McMahon, “where the government has made a deal with the two worst defendants in the case – the shooters are crackheads unworthy of belief – and is going to trial against three family men who are successful businessmen in the community."

In a Gang Land love story, Colombo associate Kevin Granato and his wife Regina have been hit with bribery and other charges for smuggling Kevin’s sperm out of a federal prison in Pennsylvania and using it to inseminate Regina four years ago.

For Granato, 43, Regina, 39, and their pretty three year old daughter Gianna, though, the indictment has a silver lining – they will be able to see each other for the first time in more than two years.

That could have happened in federal court in Willamsport, PA yesterday, but Kevin and Regina’s scheduled arraignment was put off until Dec. 30, said assistant U.S. attorney Wayne Samuelson.

Since October 2000, when the Allenwood Low Security facility was rocked by a corruption scandal that has led to more than a dozen guards, inmates and others being convicted of bribery and other charges, Granato has been in segregated confinement and prohibited by Warden Susan Gerlinski from seeing his wife and daughter.

In a letter to Regina, Gerlinski said Granato was in the hole and had his “visiting and telephone privileges” suspended because he had been deemed to “be a threat to the orderliness or security of the visiting room.”

Gianna was conceived on Dec. 2, 1998, the fifth time Regina was inseminated during a nine month stretch

that began on Mar. 2, according to a six count indictment. The scheme had been hatched on Dec. 1, 1997 when Regina visited a fertility doctor and arranged for Kevin’s semen to be deposited at a Manhattan clinic.

On two occasions – once between Jan. 1 and 2 of 1998, and a second time between Jan. 8 and 9 – Kevin’s sperm was smuggled out of the prison and deposited at a fertility clinic, according to the indictment, which does not explain how they got the sperm out of the prison, only that they employed "persons unknown." The indictment lists eight checks totaling $1232 Regina used to pay to doctors and fertility clinics during the year.

Regina, who began living with Granato in 1981 and married him in a jailhouse ceremony in 1997, began thinking about artificial insemination in 1995, when Granato, already serving eight years for drugs, was nailed for murder conspiracy and his release date was extended to 2012.

“My age was getting up there. I said, ‘Wow, I’m ging to be way to old to have a baby (if I wait until Kevin gets out.)’ I said, ‘I have to do something. I don’t feel like a woman without a child.’”

After a difficult pregnancy, Gianna, now 3, (at right in a 2002 family Christmas card)  was born Aug. 28, 1999.

Regina, who declined to comment about the indictment, readily acknowledged to Gang Land earlier this year that she had become pregnant through artificial insemination but has insisted that she broke no laws in the process.

“As we have said all along,” said Richard Rehbock, attorney for the Granatos, “the procedure used to transport the sperm from the prison did not involve the use of any prison personnel at all. No guards were involved; no one ever received any payment.”

Now that Thanksgiving Day has come and gone – we hope the turkey and trimmings were great and that a Happy Thanksgiving was had by all – here are  a couple of books that Gang Land readers might like to give as gifts during the holiday season. (Some habits die slow. For Gang Land, the holiday gift-giving season begins with Santa's arrival at Macy's in New York's Herald Square.)

Since we have pushed our own all year, we'll resist the urge to recommend them again (although, of course, they would make great stocking stuffers) and mention a couple of others we enjoyed. You can get them at your local bookstore, or Gang Land's favorite, Amazon.com.

"The Wiseguy Cookbook," By Henry Hill and Priscilla Davis is an entertaining and informative read. It's everything you wanted to know about Hill's rituals and recipes for cooking that he learned from his mother, as well as the innovative culinary skills he picked up along the way, whether it was doing time or laying low in the Witness Protection Program.

His mom's Italian heritage couldn't get him made, but the mob couldn't keep him out of her kitchen. She taught him well, although every so often he found a better way. Like with cutlets, for example. This applies to veal, chicken, pork. Eggplant too. His mom dipped them in egg and then in flour and breadcrumbs before frying.

According to Henry, the opposite way, flour and breadcrumbs first, then egg, makes for more mellow cutlets. Also, with his mom's way, "some of the breadcrumbs always fall into the oil and burn, so you have to start over with a new batch of oil after a couple of rounds of frying."

Sprinkled among staples like Pasta e Lenticchie (lentils) and Pasta con Sarde (sardines) are plenty of anecdotes about wiseguys like Paul Vario and Jimmy The Gent Burke, cooking in the Army, and in prison. And for Gang Land readers living in the heartland, Hill tells how to improvise and use substitute ingredients. From his days in the witness program, Hill knows how difficult it is to find arugula, let alone people who know what it is, in places like Omaha, Nebraska and Butte, Montana.

"Brooklyn: A State of Mind," edited by Michael W. Robbins & designed by Wendy Palitz, is a must read for anyone who was born or raised in Brooklyn, or spent a few years there, or, like the rest of the world, wishes they had.

Published last year, the book is a collection of 125 original stories and a gazillion photos that bring to life people and places that have shaped the Borough of Churches over the last 100 years. Words and pictures of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Norman Mailer, Carmine Persico, Nathan's Famous, Jackie Gleason, Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Paramount, Abe Reles and the Half Moon Hotel, the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn. Interviews of Mel Brooks, Leonard Garment and Spike Lee. And much more.

Of special interest to mob buffs, and Gang Land, is a joint interview of Brooklyn Federal Court Judges I. Leo Glasser and John Gleeson about the 1992 trial of John Gotti. Glasser, the trial judge, and Gleeson, the lead prosecutor, were interviewed – the only out-of-court comments they have uttered – in 1999, a year before star witness Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano was arrested for drug dealing, charges for which he is doing 20 years.

While neither judge said anything outrageous, even in hindsight, Gang Land is sure each wishes they had declined to discuss the case. For example, Gleeson, who was less restrained in his remarks than Glasser, described Gravano as "the best witness of all time .... He looked evil. Then Sammy flipped and I spent a great deal of time with him. Literally hundreds of hours. I got to know him well. I laughed with him. He was smart, engaging and funny."

Glasser, asked to describe the kind of man Gravano was, never gave his view, noting only that jurors and investigators had "found him sincere when he said he was attempting to put the life of organized crime behind him."

Asked about criticism that his five year sentence was too lenient, Glasser acknowledged, " I took a beating for that." But he ducked the real issue, never explaining how he justified it in his mind. Instead, he blamed the media for not  publishing the sentencing memo he had "worked many hours preparing."

Glasser loosened up, however, when asked if there were "occasions for wit" in the Gotti trial. Often described as a grouch or curmudgeon, his response indicates he may also have loosened up at least once during the very tense trial.

"I suppose I had to use my wits one day when I received a note that some of the jurors, who'd been sequestered for weeks, were requesting conjugal visits. I called the only other federal judge I knew who had sequestered a jury. He said, 'What are you going to do, judge?' I said, 'I think I'll allow it.' He said, 'Good for you. I think that's what I would do.'"

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti

The complete saga of John Gotti, from his treacherous rise to his defiant downfall, is here – Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti – the book it took yours truly and Gene Mustain 17 years to do! Although we didn't know it at the time, we began working on "Mob Star" in 1985, when we began covering the Gotti story as news reporters.

The first edition came out in 1988, and we finished this new edition three days before Gotti died in June. We added a postscript, and Alpha Books has distributed it to the nation's bookstores.

With a 40,000-word update, the new edition contains the entire Gotti saga right up to his time in prison and his death from throat cancer.

The 378 page, full-size book uses eight additional chapters, a prologue and an epilogue to complete the story we began telling (better than any other reporters, we might add!) when we covered the Gotti-orchestrated, midtown Manhattan assassination of former Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

For the last and best words on Gotti, this is the book to have. It is specially priced at Amazon.com at $11.87, more than five bucks off the suggested retail price.

    Not Really For Idiots

Whether you're a Gang Land regular or an occasional visitor, you'll enjoy  "The Complete Idiot's Guide to The Mafia," a book I wrote for Alpha Books that was published in December. It's filled with real stuff about real wiseguys and insight about the ways that mobsters make their money. It's 343 pages of true stories of life and death, honor and betrayal. Get it at your local book store, or at Gang Land's favorite, Amazon.com, where the powers that be have knocked the price down to $13.27, so low I am concerned that the Godfather of online booksellers has forgotten about my end.