Her name was Camille Colucci, and a Mafia capo's nephew wanted her for his wife.

She happened to have a husband already - but this is a Mafia love story. A couple of bullets to the back of the head soon removed Joseph Colucci from the picture. And thereafter did Camille become Mrs. Thomas Spero.

That was nearly 25 years ago. Joey Colucci was the first man Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano ever whacked. He did the job, the most infamous mob underboss in history testified at John Gotti's 1992 trial, because his then-Mafia supervisor, a capo, told him Colucci had threatened to kill the capo's nephew, Thomas Spero.

Now, from law enforcement sources and with the help of Joey Colucci's still heartbroken relatives, Gang Land discloses the real reason for Colucci's death - gangland romance.

Colucci was 26 at the time, the father of a 6-year-old boy and a 6-month-old girl. On Feb. 28, 1970, he was sitting in the front seat of a car driven by his buddy, Spero. Gravano, a .38 caliber handgun at the ready, sat behind him.

"I shot him twice in the head," Gravano told the FBI. "Then three more times when his body was dumped out of the car on Rockaway Parkway." The order, he said, came from Spero's uncle, also named Thomas, nicknamed Shorty.

Young Tommy Spero's marriage to the widow Colucci did not last forever. They divorced a few years ago. Gang Land could not locate either one of them yesterday, and it isn't known if Camille ever learned that her first husband was killed on the orders of her second husband's uncle Shorty.

Colucci's mother, for her part, always suspected it.

Within weeks of the killing, Anne Colucci told Gang Land, she was wagging her finger at the younger Spero whenever she encountered him in the neighborhood, openly accusing him of killing Joey: "You had something to do with it, or you know who killed him. How could you do this?"

It was a trying time. Because of a gravediggers' strike, she couldn't give her son a proper burial. Meanwhile, she would regularly see the man she knew was responsible for killing her son making plans to marry Joey's widow.

Now 74, she still lives in Bensonhurst, in the same house where she reared Joey and his sister Jacqueline - the same house she and Jacqueline helped rear Joey's kids.

And both mother and daughter are furious that mobster-turned-informer Gravano will soon be getting out of prison - serving less than five years for the slaying not only of Joey Colucci but 18 other people as well.

"I really feel the justice system sucks," said Jacqueline. "It really does stink. The justice system hit rock bottom. It's a very sad day when a murderer is praised as a hero by judges and prosecutors and gets a gold pin from the FBI.

"Joey was it, my one and only brother. I feel like it happened yesterday. The hurt doesn't go away. The loss of my brother has caused heartaches all these years. Our lives would have been different if he hadn't been taken away from us.

"Sammy's wife and kids are supposed to be waiting for him," she said. "He's getting out in four months and my brother is still dead, and his kids have no father. My brother was no criminal. He was the only one in the neighborhood who got up early to go to work. He was a bricklayer.

"Sammy had to prove he could be a hit man," she said bitterly. "That's what they all have to do. And so he killed his friend so Tommy Spero could move in on his wife."

"When you'e a budding Colombo associate like Sammy was, and you get an order to kill someone, you don't question it, you do it," agreed one law enforcement official. "Sammy did it."

And indeed, Gravano made his bones with the Colucci killing - proved he had the stuff to become a "made man." It was the only time in his long career as a top enforcer for the mob and, ultimately, for John Gotti, that he actually pulled the trigger himself.