| Carmine (Junior) Persico has been the boss of the Colombo family for more than 20
years. He was the focus of many Daily News Gang Land columns, including three items
about letters that the jailed-for life Mafia boss wrote from prison -- a good-natured one
to Gang Land, a legal one to a federal judge, and a testy one to Gang Land. It hasn't gone
smoothly for Carmine (above left) and his son Alphonse, (above right) but for a long while
it looked like Carmine was going to get his way, and that his college educated son,
Alphonse, would take over the reigns of the crime family. But Carmine's best laid plans
may have gone awry. Father and son went to trial together in 1986 on federal
racketeering charges - and were both convicted. Looking to his legacy, Carmine took his
39-year sentence with a smile, and pleaded for leniency for Alphonse, who got 12 years and
was due get out in May, 1993. His release was delayed however when the feds charged
Alphonse with complicity in a bloody two year long Colombo family war that left 12 dead
and dozens more injured from 1991 to 1993. But Alphonse was acquitted in August, 1994, and
sources on both sides of the law said that the prison-hardened mobster was biding his time
and would eventually assume the top spot.
In 1996, Carmine's cousin, Andrew Russo, a longtime capo who had also gotten out of
federal prison in 1994, took over as the family's acting boss. Carmine, who also was
sentenced to 100 years for a conviction in the Commission case and has virtually no chance
of getting out of prison alive, meant it as a holding pattern, with son Alphonse, a
longtime capo in the crime family, his father's choice to take over the crime family
eventually. In early 1999, Russo was convicted
of jury tampering, and pleaded guilty to
racketeering. And about the same time Russo was going down on the two federal raps,
Alphonse was nailed on federal gun charges for possessing loaded weapons while cruising
the Florida Keys on his boat "Lookin' Good." In October, 1999, Alphonse, by then
the family's acting boss, pleaded guilty to the gun charges in Florida and was arrested on
federal loansharking charges in Brooklyn.
On Feb. 10, 2000, Alphonse was sentenced to 18 months on the gun charges. On Jan. 24,
2001, the day he was scheduled to be released, he was indicted on loansharking charges and
detained without bail as the feds labelled him a suspect in
the May 26, 1999 slaying of Colombo underboss William (Wild Bill)
Cutolo. A week later, Alphonse, underboss John (Jackie) DeRoss and nine Colombo associates
were hit with racketeering and other federal charges.
Things are not lookin' good for Alphonse. In 2001, he threw in the towel,
pleading guilty to a racketeering, loansharking and money
laundering indictment in a plea bargain that called
for him to forfeit $1 million to the U.S government and
get 13 years in prison, meaning
he's not due out until 2012.
By time he had psyched himself up for the long haul, in 2004, he was
indicted for orchestrating the murder of Cutolo, a charge that carries a
life sentence upon conviction. Two years later, Alphonse dodged that bullet
when a jury hung 10-2 for conviction. He
was convicted at
his re-trial in
late
2007 and is
expected to be
sentenced to
life in prison. |
