Strictly business is the mob credo when it comes to dirty deeds. But some are strictly personal. 

When Paul Castellano (right) learned from his daughter that her boyfriend had insulted him royally, the powerful gangster recruited a couple of tough, eager-to-please, budding mob executives to eliminate the problem, permanently. 

And so, years before John Gotti and Joseph Massino rose to the top of the Gambino and Bonanno families, sources say they got together to kill the offending boyfriend, Vito Borelli. The murder is an untold chapter of Mafia history that has stayed buried for more than 25 years, along with the whereabouts of Borelli’s body. 

The boyfriend’s fatal mistake? He said out loud what Castellano’s pals were afraid to: that the Gambino family big shot, a butcher by trade, looked a lot like Frank Perdue, the resourceful businessman/self-promoter with a popular brand of chickens. For those too young to remember, this wasn’t a compliment. Perdue, starring in his own TV commercials, seemed to resemble a chicken, looking plucked and slightly beaked as he famously squawked: “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.”

The tale was told for the first time by turncoat Bonanno family underboss Salvatore Vitale, whose sister is Massino’s wife. Vitale, who will be a star witness at Massino’s upcoming trial, has told the FBI that he was called on to help Massino, Gotti and

several others dispose of Borelli’s body in 1975 after they killed him at a Manhattan cookie business that was operated by Bonanno soldier Anthony Rabito. 

Vitale (right) has told the feds that he took part in nine murders with his brother-in-law, including Borelli’s. But he insists he didn’t learn about Borelli’s execution until after it happened, according to court papers.

Initially, sources say, Massino had instructed Vitale to pick up a stolen van from a cohort and leave it parked outside Rabito’s store with the keys under the seat. Later, however, Massino called him and told him to bring his own car to the location because the van wouldn’t start.

When Vitale arrived, sources said, he saw Massino outside with Dominick (Sonny Black) Napolitano, Rabito, Gotti, and two wiseguys who would later play huge roles in Castellano’s assassination – Angelo Ruggiero and Frank DeCicco.

Vitale said that after he backed his car against the building, the crew placed a body wrapped in a tan drop cloth into the trunk. Ruggiero and DeCicco then

got in the car and directed him to a Queens garage.

At the garage, Vitale said, several men were waiting, including one who was holding a knife. When the body was removed from the trunk, he noticed that Borelli appeared to have been shot in the face and body, and was wearing only his underwear. Years later, Vitale told the feds, he saw a newspaper photo of Roy DeMeo, (left) the notorious mob hitman whose specialty was carving up bodies like a Perdue chicken. DeMeo, he said, was one of the men waiting in the garage. 

Vitale completed his duties that night by dropping off Ruggiero and DeCicco at the late Dapper Don’s Ozone Park social club, the Bergin Hunt & Fish Club. A few days later, Vitale recalled, Massino explained that Borelli had been dating Castellano’s daughter and had insulted him in front of his daughter, saying “that Paul Castellano had looked like Frank Perdue.”

The episode had a couple of eerie echoes for Castellano. One was that, as much as Paul Castellano didn’t want to look like Frank Perdue, he didn’t mind doing business with him. A year after Borelli’s murder, Castellano rose to become boss of the family with the death of his brother in law, Carlo Gambino. The step up allowed Big Paul to spread his wings, and he soon arranged for his own company, Dial Poultry, to distribute Perdue chickens. The chicken men apparently hit it off. When Perdue had union problems at a Queens restaurant he was opening in 1981, he sought Castellano’s advice about straightening things out.

The other echo occurred in 1980, when another of his daughter’s sweethearts offended him. This time, Frank Amato had already married the boss’s daughter when Castellano had him killed. The executioner, according to FBI documents, was none other than knife man Roy Demeo, who cut up Amato’s body and disposed of the remains at sea. 

The Borelli murder was a significant career-advancer for Massino, according to court papers filed by assistant U.S. attorneys Greg Andres, Robert Henoch and Mitra Hormozi. In 1981, Massino played on his prior service to obtain Castellano’s approval to execute three rival capos who were fomenting a rebellion against then-Bonanno boss Philip (Rusty) Rastelli.

And, sources say, several Gambino mobsters, including then-underboss Aniello (Neil) Dellacroce, (right) helped plan the May 5, 1981 slayings of the three capos at a Brooklyn social club and helped dispose of the bodies, according to accounts provided by other Bonanno family defectors.

Sources say that Frank (Curly) Lino, who was aligned with the slain capos – Philip (Philly Lucky) Giaccone, Dominick (Big Trin) Trinchera, and Alphonse (Sonny Red) Indelicato – and escaped the carnage, has told the feds that he was confronted after the slayings by Dellacroce and Gotti brother Gene and asked if he had notified police.

When Lino (left) responded negatively, sources say, Dellacroce was pleased, and told Lino he hadn’t been slated for death, and then, turning to Ruggiero and DeCicco, told them it was now “safe to clean up the club” and to proceed there.

In Vitale’s account, the triple execution ran into a few snafus. One was the accidental wounding of Santo Giordano, a member of the Sicilian faction that was allied with Massino. Giordano was hit by mistake in the wild shootout that began when the three capos entered the club for what they believed were peace negotiations.

The other was Vitale’s own screw-up. He was handed a submachine and told to position himself in a closet. He was unfamiliar with the weapon, however, and as a result, he precipitated chaos and a near crisis when he “accidentally discharged the weapon before the three capos arrived.”

Vitale will tell the entire tale sometime after the start of Massino’s racketeering and murder trial, now scheduled to begin May 24. Massino (right) is charged with seven murders from 1981 through 1987, including those of the three capos and Sonny Black, yet another alleged accomplice in the chicken revenge slaying of Vito Borelli.

Award-winning Philadelphia crime reporter George Anastasia serves up a fascinating insider's account of what he calls "the most dysfunctional mob family in America" in his latest book,  "The Last Gangster." The book revolves around the life and times of Big Ron Previte, a 6-foot, 300-pound capo who was a corrupt Philly cop in an earlier life .

Anastasia paints Previte as an "underworld mercenary" whose only loyalty was to the person he saw staring back at him in the mirror each morning. Even as he rose the ladder from mob associate to soldier to capo, Previte kept an "insurance policy" – his agreement to work as an informer for law enforcement.

By 1997 he had upped the stakes, strapping on a body wire and recording conversations for the FBI for two years. Those discussions with crime family leaders like Ralph Natale (right) and Skinny Joey Merlino were the basis for a big racketeering case and the backdrop for "The Last Gangster."

Natale is described as a mob boss who "talked a better game than he played."

"He thought he was Don Corleone," Anastasia writes, "but he was really Uncle Junior."

Merlino is depicted as a younger and hipper John Gotti, a South Philadelphia celebrity gangster who epitomized the MTV generation of the mob.