March 19, 2019
With his imprisonment, Andrew Russo's name still turned up in FBI files. That's because his crew, now run in the interim by nephew Chucky, was responsible for the high-profile, botched attempted killings of father-and-son mobsters. On the evening of January 4, 1982, Joseph Peraino Sr., 60, and his son Joseph Jr., 31, were chased down a quiet, residential street in Gravesend, Brooklyn, hunted by armed assassins. The fleeing Perainos burst into the home of Louis & Veronica Zuraw, innocent civilians caught up in a violent mob hit. The hit team wasn't far behind, all armed with shotguns. One of them ran up the stairs and blindly fired, hoping to catch either of the Perainos in the tight quarters. Instead, they hit Veronica Zuraw, who was folding laundry, directly in the head, killing her instantly. They did manage to kill Joe Peraino Jr., but only injured the father in the buttocks. The following day, Scarpa eagerly reported that the bloodbath was committed by "Andrew Russo's crew and noted that Carmine Persico authorized the contract on the Peraino's." The botched assassination was incredibly lousy publicity for the crime family, considering Veronica Zuraw was a former nun. Although nobody has been convicted of the hit, it was brought up in court documents from Tommy Gioeli's 2008 trial, as reported by Gang Land in 2011. According to the article, Tommy Shots, 29, & Joseph 'Junior Lollipops' Carna, 42, were in crash cars down the block ready to intercept oncoming police cars. Salvatore 'Big Sal' Miciotta, 35, and Vincent 'Jimmy' Angelino, 46, were the alleged triggermen. By 2011, when the court documents surfaced, Miciotta was in the Witness Protection Program, Angelino had been murdered, and Carna was on his deathbed, serving time for money laundering.
Starting in 1983, Russo, 48, brought his two mobster sons into his racketeering empire. He muscled in on a cruise ship casino and began skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars from the net take alongside his sons, JoJo, 29, and Billy, 21. Unfortunately, the legal troubles continued for Andy Mush and his cousin. On October 24, 1984, federal officials announced the indictment of "the entire leadership of the Colombo family" of organized crime on charges of widespread racketeering in New York City. The 51-count indictment charged 11 men with operating the Colombo family through "a pattern of racketeering activity" that included extortion, theft, loansharking, gambling, bribery and drug dealing. In a role reversal from his 1980 case, Russo decided to turn himself in while cousin Carmine went on the run. Russo called upon his sister and her husband in Long Island to harbor the fugitive boss, which is where Persico would remain while his loyal soldiers faced the music in court. Out on $500,000 bail, Russo got to return to his plush Old Brookville estate, and on October 23, 1985, after a day in court, he took his wife and granddaughter out on his boat out for a spin in Great South Bay. It was then that Russo became a local hero in his township. In the distance, he spotted a rough wave capsize a small rowboat with two fishermen inside. One was trapped under the boat, while another frantically paddled, screaming that he couldn't swim. Russo dived into the water and managed to rescue them both, while his wife Ruth used the ship-to-shore telephone to call the county cops, who had no idea the heroic swimmer was on trial for racketeering offenses. Earlier that year, cousin Carmine had, by all accounts, been a polite and courteous guest at the Wantagh, Long Island home of Fred Christopher, Andrew Russo's brother-in-law.
While Persico was hiding out, DeChristopher later said, he talked freely to the Wantagh insurance salesman about his illegal activities, boasting that he had used visitors and coded telephone calls from prison to Langella and other loyalists to relay orders about his criminal operations. Persico had apparently bragged about sharing a cell with drug-dealing Bonanno family boss Carmine 'Cigar' Galante in the 1970s and expressed his admiration for him. Persico followed up with his most incriminating comment yet: "And quite frankly, I voted against him getting hurt." This would bite Carmine in the ass when, on February 15, 1985, Fred DeChristopher sold his in-law Carmine out to the feds. An FBI agent dialed DeChristopher's phone and asked that he speak to Persico. Fred was expecting the call and dutifully handed the phone over. Carmine, nervous and jittery after three months on the lam, growled: "Who is this?" The soft-spoken investigator replied: "This is the FBI. We have the house surrounded. Come out with your hands up." Carmine did as he was told, and the agents were also able to nab captain Dominic Montemarano, who was also on the run. Through a tap on DeChristopher's phone, the FBI learned that the two mobsters & boyhood pals had organized a luncheonette conference. Seemingly without a care in the world, the wily Colombo boss cracked jokes with agents in the car, and even signed one of their FBI's Most Wanted posters of him.
The trial for the defendants began on November 4, 1985, and there wouldn't be any sweet five-year plea deals this time. Prosecutor Bruce Baird's opening statements were aggressive and dramatic, announcing that the Colombo crime family operated in extortion, loansharking, bribery, illegal gambling, and drug trafficking as their "stable, lucrative source of income." Carmine Persico and his underboss, Gennaro 'Gerry Lang' Langella, were charged with being the labor racketeers behind the "Concrete Club," which skimmed 1% from concrete suppliers' contracts across the entire Big Apple. This prevented the suppliers from facing "bad workers, or work slowdowns, or strikes or you'd never get any concrete at all," according to Baird. "It's called labor peace," he continued. "It's also called extortion."
The defendants were, as follows:
Carmine 'Junior' Persico, 52, reputed boss of the Colombo crime family.
Gennaro 'Jerry Lang' Langella, 48, underboss.
Andrew 'Andy Mush' Russo, 51, Carmine's cousin and caporegime.
John 'Jackie' DeRoss, 48, caporegime.
Anthony 'Scappy' Scarpati, 48, caporegime.
Alphonse 'Little Allie Boy' Persico, 31, Carmine's son and family soldier.
Hugh 'Apples' McIntosh, 58, Carmine's bodyguard and enforcer.
Ralph Scopo Sr., 56, soldier and president of a concrete workers union local.
Dominic 'Little Dom' Cataldo, 49, soldier
Frank 'Beansy' Melli, 42, soldier.
Frank 'the Beast' Falanga, 64, associate.
Although not charged with any severe labor racketeering crimes, Russo faced substantial time for loansharking. Eyebrows were raised in the courthouse when actor James Caan, who starred in The Godfather, walked into the courthouse and embraced Carmine Persico with a kiss on the cheek. According to a November 5, 1985, Daily News article, Caan said he didn't care about any bad publicity, and that he made an effort to travel across the country from his Hollywood, Ca. home to New York. Unfortunately, shortly after his exchange with Don Carmine, Caan was hit with a subpoena to appear as a witness at the trial he was attending."Just because I show up here they hit me with this," Caan told Daily News reporters outside the courtroom. "As punishment, I guess. It's bad publicity but I don't care. I'm here because I'm a friend of Andrew Russo. We grew up together here in New York."On November 26, 1985, yet another Hollywood star showed up in support of Andy Mush. Burt Young, one of the stars of the 'Rocky' franchise, was a spectator at the trial and said he was a boyhood pal of defendants Gennaro Langella and Andrew Russo in their Corona, Queens neighborhood. "I knew these guys since we played stickball together."
Throughout November 1985, Richard Annicharico was the star witness against Russo, despite having already convicted the mobster in the 1980 bribery case. Annicharico rehashed that case's details as he described the huge wads of cash that came his way when he seemingly fixed Colombo mobsters' tax investigations and trials, including Russo's. On December 12, a "boys night out" photo of Caan, Russo, and former Long Island restaurateur Victor Puglisi became evidence at the trial. Puglisi was the Long Island restaurateur who accidentally got himself, Russo, and Persico snared in an undercover sting with IRS agent Richard Annicharico. Meanwhile, Andy Russo was graced by singer Joey Heatherton at his trial, who kissed him and later lunched with him at the Manhattan courthouse. Although former Los Angeles Mafia boss James 'Jimmy the Weasel' Frattiano had also labeled Andy Russo a mafioso, it was Russo's own (ex-)brother-in-law that sealed his fate for the feds. Fred Christopher, the insurance salesman that harbored Carmine Persico as a fugitive for three months, described his interactions with Russo starting from the moment he married Andy's sister.
According to Selwyn Raab's comprehensive Mafia history "Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires," DeChristopher watched as Russo, without any warning, snapped at a restaurant dinner. A third man at the table had offended Russo, who stuck a fork to the man's eye and growled: ""Look when I tell you to do something, you do it, okay asshole?" As the terrified man frantically signaled his compliance, Russo snarled, "The next time you fuck up, I'll push this fork right into your fucking eye." According to Raab, later that night, Russo proudly explained his modus operandi to DeChristopher."If they fear you, Freddie, they'll lick your hand or kiss your feet. They'll respect you. I'm a gangster, see Freddie? I can lie, and I can cheat, and I can kill."In what must have been an embarrassing moment for Russo, DeChristopher provided incriminating evidence on the witness stand against the entire Mafia Commission when he told of how Carmine Persico had "voted against" murdering the Bonanno family boss Carmine Galante. The storied 1979 rubout of Galante, gunned down in a restaurant with his cigar still burning in his mouth, was part of the alleged 'racketeering conspiracy' that the Mafia Commission was behind, and it was a murder charge that carried a lot of weight for the bosses of all New York's Five Families, who had been indicted in February 1985, just as Carmine was finally arrested. DeChristopher testified that Persico had talked about his underboss Langella, referring to him as "trustworthy," and Ralph Scopo as "his front man in the cement and concrete workers' union and that not a yard of concrete was poured in the city of New York where he and his friends didn't get a piece of it." On cross-examination, Carmine Persico, acting as his own attorney, lambasted DeChristopher for selling him out over a $50,000 FBI reward prize, as opposed to DeChristopher's testimony that he did it because he was a good, law-abiding citizen who hated what the Mafia was doing to society. Persico insinuated that DeChristopher had stolen $200,000 from a family member, and was always failing to pay the bills. "You couldn't buy socks," Persico exclaimed when DeChristopher testified he'd paid for another house he owned in cash. Testimony eventually revealed that DeChristopher had been an FBI informant for the past ten years, according to a NY Daily News article dated May 5, 1986, a revelation that caused DeChristopher's wife Christine, who remained loyal to her blood family, to faint outside the courtroom. Christine was called in as a defense witness to refute what DeChristopher alleged Persico had told him. On June 13, 1986, the nine remaining defendants were found guilty after twelve days of jury deliberation. It was the first significant victory for the federal government in its two-year drive against organized crime in the New York City area. The trial, which lasted ten months, featured a total of 82 witnesses, over 200 secretly recorded conversations, and more than 800 documents. Russo was found guilty of two racketeering charges but acquitted on another two, and he received a fourteen-year sentence. Carmine Persico, whose life the judge described as "a tragedy," received 39 years. "You are one of the most intelligent people I've ever seen in my life," the judge said. Gennaro Langella fared even worse, getting 65 years. Judge John F. Keenan gave Carmine's 33-year-old son Alphonse a 12-year sentence, and gave him a word of advice: "You are a chump if you stay in the Colombo crime family." Capo John DeRoss also received 12 years, compared to Anthony 'Scappy' Scarpati's whopping 35 years. Soldier Dominic Cataldo got 15, and Hugh McIntosh, despite his reputation for violence and his closeness to Don Carmine, got the best sentence of them all: 10 years.
