March 19, 2019
While Andy Mush was away, the Colombo crime family was all but decimated in his absence. Carmine Persico, who received a 100-year sentence in another case, continued to hold an iron grip on his crime family, maintaining control from behind bars until his son Little Allie Boy Persico was released from prison and ready to assume the title. Carmine's brother, Allie Boy, was first to hold the mantle of "acting boss," but went on the lam shortly after a loansharking indictment. So, starting in January 1987, the crime family was run by a selected panel of captains. At first the board was a triumvirate consisting of capos Vincent 'Jimmy' Angelino, Joseph 'Joe T' Tomasello, and Benedetto 'Benny' Aloi, but later came to include Queens capo Victor 'Little Vic' Orena and Andrew Russo's son, Joseph 'JoJo' Russo, whom I'll be looking at later as part of this biography.
In early 1988, Carmine decided to invest in Little Vic Orena to run the crime family exclusively as 'acting boss.' Vic was an intelligent, money-making wiseguy with extensive operations in Queens and Long Island. He was the same age as Carmine, and also a cousin of the Persico bloodline. Following the 1984 and 1985 Persico indictments, Little Vic became Little Allie Boy's acting capo and was well-liked throughout the family. As an example of how much faith Persico had in Little Vic, he gave the new acting boss the responsibility to order hits and induct soldiers on his own accord, according to Selwyn Raab's acclaimed book, 'Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires.'Although he portrayed himself as a loyal caretaker, Orena was slowly building himself a power base. Larry Mazza, the protégé of elder Colombo family statesman Greg Scarpa, wrote in his autobiography 'The Life: A True Story About A Brooklyn Boy Seduced Into The Dark World Of The Mafia' about a meeting that was called by Jimmy Angelina, the consigliere of the crime family in 1987. According to Mazza, Angelina spelled out to Scarpa how Orena was currying favor with the family's capos to take over the family, and selectively inducting associates into the family that were loyal to him alone. This included two of his sons, Vincent Jr. and John, as well as Joseph 'Joe Legs' Legrano, Dennis 'Fat Dennis' DeLucia and Vincent 'Schwartzie' Cascio. Most of these new members were from Queens since Brooklyn was Carmine Persico's domain. But Orena did indeed have one Brooklyn capo on his side, the powerful and flamboyant William 'Wild Bill' Cutolo. From 1987 to 1991, Cutolo's top henchmen were inducted into the Colombo Borgata, including right-hand-man Robert Donofrio, Joseph 'Joe Campy' Campanella and Vincent 'Chickie' DeMartino.All the while, Orena was refusing to bring men into the family that he thought would be loyal to the Persicos. Greg Scarpa's men were fearsome, robust, and earned money for the crime family but, due to Scarpa's undeclared loyalty, Orena was refusing to induct them. According to 'The Life,' Larry Mazza and Joseph 'Joe Fish' Marra were proposed for induction in 1986 but were left off Orena's lists. Supporting the notion that Little Vic was molding the family into his loyal army, Joseph 'Joey Brains' Ambrosino testified that in March 1991, Orena told acting capo Bobby Zambardi that his stepson Big Jerry Ciauri - a member of Greg Scarpa's Brooklyn crew - couldn't be inducted into the family because of his involvement in drugs. As it so happened, Greg Scarpa and his unit were knee-deep in the drug trade, as were various members of the Persico bloodline. In fact, at the time of that March meeting, Colombo soldier Teddy Persico Jr. - the nephew of Don Carmine - had just received a 20-to-life sentence for dealing cocaine and heroin.
In the middle of all of this was Andrew Russo's son, Joseph (JoJo), and nephew Anthony (Chucky) Russo, who ran intertwined crews based in Third Avenue in Brooklyn. Chucky was technically the capo of Greg Scarpa, who kept himself a mere soldier while carrying heavy weight in the crime family. On March 26, 1991, Greg Scarpa gave his FBI handlers a list of names in JoJo's crew: Joseph 'Junior Lollipops' Carna, Gerard 'Jerry Green Eyes' Clemenza, Leonard Dello, Thomas 'Tommy Shots' Gioeli, Salvatore 'Big Sal' Miciotta, John Minerva, Joseph Montemarano, Nicky Rizzo, and William 'Billy' Russo. In an earlier memo, he had also reported that "Joe Monte" (Joseph Monteleone) was inducted into the family on the recommendation of JoJo Russo. The Russos were fast becoming some of the only members of the family that were remaining loyal to the imprisoned-for-life Don Carmine, and they would prove it later in 1991. On the evening of June 20 that year, Vic Orena was driving home to his luxurious Cedarhurst, Long Island home when he spotted something that no wiseguy would want to see. Parked directly across the road from his home was his consigliere, Carmine Sessa, sitting with two of Carmine Persico's top captains; Johnny Pate and Bobby Zambardi, whose stepson Orena had been denied family membership earlier. Both Sessa and Zambardi were brought into the family by Greg Scarpa. When Little Vic pulled a quick U-turn away from the three mobsters donned in baseball caps, the Colombo family would never be the same. It's thought that Carmine Sessa was being directed by Greg 'the Grim Reaper' Scarpa, who allegedly orchestrated the war on behalf of Carmine Persico, according to Peter Lance's well-researched book 'Deal with the Devil: The FBI's Secret Thirty-Year Relationship with a Mafia Killer.' While Carmine and Co. were supposed to murder Little Vic, another team of hitmen were awaiting the 'all clear' to murder Joseph Scopo, Vic's devout underboss. But when Little Vic returned home early in a different car and caught the hit team off guard, the plan fell through.
In the following months, Little Vic - who, by most accounts, tended to avoid bloodshed - attempted to reason with Carmine Persico's men. He called on the Commission to hold sitdowns with members from both sides. But wiretaps and informer testimony shows that the Persico's men, despite being woefully outnumbered by Orena's men, were uncooperative. Accounts differ, but the general consensus is that within the Colombo Family, around 75 of the family's soldiers pledged allegiance to Little Vic while only 25 remained loyal to Don Carmine. A taped prison phone call from June 1991 shows the Russo Cousins' high-level role in the internecine family turmoil. Calling Little Allie Boy Persico at his Milan, MI prison cell, Carmine Sessa referred to the Russos as "the cousins," according to a Gang Land News article dated April 27, 1993, whereas Carmine Persico and his brother Theodore were referred to as "Papa Bear" and "Teddy Bear," respectively. Sessa griped about how the Russos and Teddy had refused to attend a Commission meeting to resolve the stalemate, and Allie Boy gave his promise that he would bring them in line. The next day, capo John Pate flew to Michigan to visit the younger Persico, and the two spoke at length in the visiting room. While Carmine Sessa was weary of a full-blown war, Joseph Russo assured him that he would rally his men at a moment's notice and prepare for war.
In August of 1991, tensions brewed further when Little Vic gave the order that the Russo Cousins, Teddy Persico Sr., Richie Fusco, and Johnny Pate were no longer "capos," and their crews would be assumed by other Orena-aligned mobsters. Naturally, the named capos ignored this order, and Carmine Persico responded by announcing that Victor Orena was no longer the acting boss, with Carmine Sessa officially taking his place. Unsurprisingly, this order was ignored by Little Vic. The other Five Families, eager to hold a winning stake in the inevitable conflict, began picking sides. John Gotti openly and brazenly sided with Little Vic; the pair had grown up in the same Queens circles, and Greg Scarpa alluded to the FBI that Vic was a puppet of Gotti's. The Dapper Don told his Gambino men that they could no longer associate with a list of twenty-five Persico faction soldiers. The Genoveses, refusing to support a faction openly, secretly voiced their enthusiasm for Carmine Persico. The Lucchese family likely followed the Genoveses' lead, while it's thought that the Bonanno family (who had taken to calling themselves the 'Massino' family after their new boss Big Joey) also sided with Little Vic.
From prison, Andrew Russo put himself in charge of his son's defense strategy, and Joseph's attorneys were not allowed to make any legal decisions with the imprisoned mob don's explicit approval.
On July 29, 1994, Andrew 'Andy Mush' Russo was released from prison, having served ten years in prison. When he was convicted of racketeering and loansharking in 1986, he couldn't have possibly imagined that he would never see his son JoJo or his nephew Chucky again, and he could never have imagined that his cousin Carmine would tear the Colombo crime family in two after a vicious and bloody civil war that he led from behind bars. By 1994, there was nobody on the streets left to control the family, which had only recently made peace following the two-year conflict. Persico acting bosses Joseph 'Joe T' Tomasello, Theodore Persico Sr. (the brother of Carmine), and Carmine Sessa had all been taken off the streets, and Sessa had even flipped and worked for the government to help snare Joe T and Teddy. Other powerful Persico capos like John Pate, Richard Fusco, Robert Zambardi, Gregory Scarpa, and Andy Russo's son & nephew were also behind bars. It soon became apparent to federal investigators that Andy Russo was now in charge of the Colombo crime family, on behalf of imprisoned 'Junior' Persico. Acclaimed mob reporter Jerry Capeci was the first to announce the new promotion in a Daily News article dated January 8, 1995 - information that he said came from "sources on both sides of the law." The Colombo crime family's headquarters was the same as when Carmine Persico was out-and-about, according to Capeci. This was a social club on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, which had been refurbished and renamed as His and Hers Social & Athletic Club. Capeci's sources said that shortly after Russo's release from prison, Persico loyalists ironed out a peace agreement with the remaining Orena members, with legendary 76-year-old capo John 'Sonny' Franzese also involved. The truce saw Joel 'Joe Waverly' Cacace, an Orena capo who was shot at by Greg Scarpa's men on more than one occasion, receive a promotion to "acting underboss." Cacace, 53, held court "several days a week at the E. Third St. Social Club in Brooklyn's Gravesend section, sources said."
Meanwhile, Russo attempted to steer the Colombo family back on track. He conducted meetings with high-ranking mobsters from families across New York and, interestingly enough, with out-of-state Mafia families too. At a Mafia trial in April 2001, ex-Philadelphia mob boss Ralph Natale testified that he traveled to Brooklyn to hold court with the Colombo don. This particular meeting was watched by FBI agents and took place on January 18, 1996. Natale, capo Steve Mazzone and mob associate Tyrone DeNitis were stalked by G-men as they left Philadelphia and into Manhattan. There, they met the boss of the small Pennsylvania Mafia, William 'Billy' D'Elia, before traveling down to Brooklyn that evening and being picked up by capo Thomas 'Tommy Shots' Gioeli and Andy Mush's son, Billy, a Colombo soldier. This is thought to be the first time the younger Russo was publicly outed as a Mafia soldier in court. The agents also testified that Natale and Co. were taken to 506 President Street, "a compound of the Colombo crime family," where he met Andy Mush. There was no disputing that Andy Russo's job was temporary until Alphonse 'Little Allie Boy' Persico, 40, assumed the mantle. Allie Boy was released from prison just a week after Andy Mush, but with his parole lasting until 1997, the college-educated gangster was craftily keeping a low profile. Persico was indicted in 1993 on charges that he helped his father wage war from behind bars but was - to his surprise - acquitted. "(A)t a time when the city's five families are weakened, and under siege, the younger Persico's polished leadership could bring an era of lucrative stability to organized crime," Capeci said. While Russo ran the family's day-to-day, Allie Boy "spends most of his time at Romantique Limousines, a Brooklyn car service he operates with his brother, Michael," wrote the January 8, 1995, Daily News article. So, with the scholarly Alphonse Persico awaiting his rise to the top, his 60-year-old, shrewd cousin Andy Mush reorganizing the family, and hardened wiseguy Joel Cacace keeping the Orena faction in check, the family looked to have a bright future ahead of it. As Capeci put it; "His (Russo's) numerous real-estate and other business interests have led to lasting friendships with a coterie of entertainers, boxers, and movie industry insiders." Unfortunately, neither Russo nor Persico would be able to stay out of prison long enough to see the new millennium, and as the FBI's crusade against the Mafia deepened, the Colombo family as a whole remained firmly wedged at the bottom of the New York Mafia's pecking order.
The Mafia has a no-no policy against bringing wives, daughters, or women in general into their organized crime affairs, and Andy Mush Russo would eventually learn why. In a 1994 Christmas party, Russo met a gal named Dorothy Suffel, a slender attorney 32 years younger than him. Dorothy's introduction to mobsters came in the late 1980s, when the beauty school graduate worked at a barbershop in Queens where she mixed with a clientele that included Colombo crime family figures, according to her testimony on January 12, as reported by the Associated Press. She earned a law degree from St. John's University, passing the bar exam, and was married. But at that '94 Christmas party, the "gangster and the lawyer" hit it off immediately, and the following day Russo's nephew passed a message from the acting boss, telling Dorothy she "was the best thing since sliced bread." In the next few days, the pair hung out at Elaine's and went to a New Year's Eve party at his Glen Head, L.I. home. For the following months, Russo showered her with gifts and affection - she was his stereotypical Mafia mistress. As their relationship grew more and more intimate, Russo entrusted her to pass coded messages to his imprisoned son JoJo. Because of her attorney status, she didn't need any special clearance to see the wiseguy. She soon began delivering letters from JoJo's mistress, Teresa Castronova, who had, in May 1994, been part of a plot to contact one of the anonymous jurors in his trial. Teresa recognized this juror from high school, and a private investigator was sent in to arrange a meeting. The investigator, Nicholas Vasile, spoke to the juror's mother and left a business card, but the juror contacted the judge in the case. The U.S. Attorney's office was quick to leap in. They assigned an agent to investigate possible jury tampering, but Vasile claimed the request had been left by a man he didn't know. As prosecutors approached a dead end, a grand jury subpoenaed Teresa Castronova for her testimony on the matter. But Teresa never showed up. For the next year, the one FBI agent tasked with solving the potential jury tampering scare searched for JoJo Russo's mistress but couldn't find her. It later turned out she was at the Long Island horse farm of Dennis Hickey, a garbage hauler and longtime associate of Andrew Russo, who had been released from prison in July of that year and spent a lot of time at the farm. There were definitely some close calls, however. At one point, according to court documents, Andrew Russo's probation officer paid a surprise visit to the horse farm, and Teresa hid under a bed. Then, Teresa's son asked (in front of the probation officer) where his mom was, and Andrew told the officer that the boy was his nephew. Nevertheless, life was pretty good at the horse farm. Russo supplied her with cars and Hickey gave her money and home appliances. Teresa went by the name "Laurie," and dyed her hair for when she went out in public. Meanwhile, JoJo Russo was kept abreast of the situation through Dorothy Suffel, who claimed that the private investigator was referred to as "Dick Tracey" when the two had prison meetings. Dorothy's fling with the mob boss ended in July 1995, after she met Lawrence 'Larry' Fiorenza. He was another Colombo associate facing trial for wartime murder, and she met him whilst passing messages to JoJo. In April of 1996, the two wedded in a jailhouse ceremony.
On September 11, 1996, the hammer dropped for Andy Russo and his Long Island garbage carting empire. Federal authorities unsealed a 31-count indictment charging an elaborate scheme that enabled garbage carter Dennis Hickey to continue to haul garbage in Islip, despite a 1987 conviction in which he admitted bribing town officials and was barred from doing any further business there. Feds said Hickey, 55, was a Colombo associate who answered to acting boss Andrew Russo, 61. The pair faced mail fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and other charges. Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Zachary Carter said Russo and Hickey controlled the Long Island carting industry through fraud, theft, and violence, inflating costs and knocking out the competition. Hickey allegedly brought his wife Maria, 50, into the scheme as well as their son, Dennis Jr., 29, by making them in charge of various front companies. On paper, Dennis Sr. ran Hickey Carting, but his under-the-table businesses included Grand East, Grand Carting, and Competition Carting. Federal prosecutors said Russo's take of the loot was a "mob tax" that ended up being passed onto Long Island consumers, who were forced to pay for more than elsewhere in New York for their carting. Others indicted were Joseph Carione, 63, and Carione's son Angelo, 29. Although Andy Russo's 1980 bribery arrest hinted at his involvement in the carting industry, this was the first indictment that actually sought to prove it. Russo had called upon an IRS double agent, Louis Annicharico, to fix tax investigations of at least one major carting company and its head, Steven LoMangino of Adak Carting Inc. Around the time of his indictment, the New York Daily News began reporting that Andy Russo was more than just the family's acting boss - in a power-sharing agreement with Vic Orena's men, both Carmine Persico and Victor Orena had supposedly stood down from any titles they had, leaving Andy to take the helm as the "official" boss. A Daily News article dated January 26, 1997, went into more detail, naming Andy Mush as the official boss, Joel 'Joe Waverly' Cacace as the official underboss, and longtime family bigwig Vincent Aloi as the consigliere. The article, written by Jerry Capeci, revealed that the Colombo crime family had been temporarily suspended from the Mafia Commission following the bloody war from '91-'93. This included a halt on any new making ceremonies, causing the Colombos to dwindle away through the mid-1990s. Finally, the article closed by saying that since the arrest & detention of Russo, low-key Queens capo Ralph Lombardo had "taken a bigger role." Today, we can say with almost complete certainty that Carmine 'Junior' Persico is still the family's official boss, despite what the 1997 article wrote. However, Capeci's law enforcement & street-level sources were spot on, both with the Mafia Commission ousting, the ban on making ceremonies, and Ralph Lombardo's increased standing.
Although Andy Russo probably never really made it to "official boss," it certainly didn't do him any favors in his case. An aggravating factor in his detention hearing was the fact that he was serving as the head of a crime family whilst on federal supervised release. Citing a May 1996 meeting with underboss Joel Cacace, Russo was denied bail and forced to prepare for his trial in prison, despite being charged with nonviolent crimes. In fact, a federal judge actually granted Russo a $3 million bail, which Russo was willing and able to post, although his parole officers quickly shut that down. Russo was facing not only the garbage hauling case but also the probation violation, which could have seen him behind bars for two years. In 1997, the beleaguered acting boss was found guilty by a hearing officer, despite the fact that the FBI agent who witnessed the May meeting between Russo and Cacace changed her story on more than one occasion. This came after defense attorneys noted that it would have been impossible for the mobsters to have met where and when she said they did. On a technical violation that usually meant eight months at most, Andy Mush was sent back to prison until June of 2000 due to an "aggravating factor" - his role as the crime family's boss. He earned no parole credit for the time he spent behind bars awaiting trial for his garbage-hauling case, and his parole sentence didn't actually begin until March the following year. The bad luck only got worse for the Russo family. On September 23, 1997, three teenagers were indicted in a brutal assault that was allegedly racially-motivated. The hate crime made it to newspapers worldwide, and as it so happened, there was a Mafia element. Alfonse Russo, 19, and Andrew Russo, 17, were two of the three assailants, and Alfonse was described as the son of a "reputed capo in the Colombo family," according to the Daily News. This capo can be independently verified as Anthony 'Chucky' Russo, Andy Mush's nephew, and the younger Andrew Russo is the grandson of the indicted acting boss.
With all his legal troubles, 1997 was an especially bad year for Andy. But it got even worse when Dorothy Fiorenza, his old flame, began cooperating with the federal government. The price in the Mafia for messing with another wiseguy's girl is generally pretty harsh, oftentimes death. So, that year, to protect her new husband Larry and to hopefully get him a new life in the Witness Protection Program, she spilled the beans on how she helped Andy in the failed attempt to rig his son's murder trial. On September 24, 1998, the feds finally charged the imprisoned Andy Mush with those crimes. He was looking at hard time for his three separate criminal cases: money laundering, fraud & bribery in his garbage-hauling case, witness tampering and obstruction of justice in his jury-fixing case, and, finally, violating probation. Russo went to trial on January 12, 1999. Dorothy began testifying from day one, describing her first encounters with Andy Mush. "This trial is going to begin to sound like a soap opera," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Dorsky. He hit the nail on the head with that one. As Dorothy discussed her life and crimes with Russo, most of which we've detailed earlier, Andy's attorney George Santangelo was quick to tear her testimony apart. He noted that at the time a juror in Joseph Russo's trial was contacted, Andy Mush was still in prison on his 1985 racketeering conviction. Santangelo described Fiorenza as a "troubled woman" who had ruined her life by marrying imprisoned Colombo murderer Larry Fiorenza, according to a Daily News article dated January 13. Larry Fiorenza, apart from serving a long sentence for Colombo war crimes, was suffering from AIDS and cirrhosis of the liver, proving the age-old adage that love really is blind. At the time of the trial, doctors said Fiorenza would not live for more than a year or two. Dorothy's testimony was bolstered by a letter from Teresa Castronova that was meant for JoJo. Dorothy admitted withholding the letter from the imprisoned mobster after her and Teresa had a falling out. If the erratic attorney-turned-mob-mill wasn't enough for the jury, cellmate Mario Parlegreco also testified about the ranks and positions of Andrew & Joseph Russo, as well as Dennis Hickey. Parlagreco was a violent associate in Colombo capo Greg Scarpa Jr.'s "Wimpy Boys" until his imprisonment in 1987. In 1995, the incarcerated mob associate was indicted once again and, fearing that he'd spend the rest of his life in prison, cooperated with the government. Prior to then, Mario was a prison pal of both Andy Mush and JoJo and told the court that they had both discussed Dennis Hickey as being "with" them.
On January 26, 1999, Andrew and Dennis were both convicted, much to Andy Mush's dismay. The verdict must have knocked the fight out of him, and he decided to plead guilty rather than go to trial in his garbage-hauling case. He was expecting his two sentences to run concurrently but was let down by the courts once again. According to a Daily News article from August 5, 1999, he lashed out in court after being given a 57-month sentence that would be "added to" 123 months he was to receive for a parole violation and the garbage hauling case."I got to give you credit, Dorsky," Andy Mush said in court, referring to prosecutor Daniel Dorsky. "You ended up giving me a life sentence with this Mickey Mouse case. Why don't you put me in the electric chair right here in the courtroom and get it over with now?" After noting that Russo would be "78, if I live that long," Judge David Trager commented; "You look pretty healthy." Russo was able to win a minor victory in court, getting Trager to rescind a $20,000 fine after claiming poverty, despite the government's allegations that Andy Mush was a millionaire. In fact, at sentencing, Dennis Hickey agreed to a whopping $7.5 million forfeiture, some of which came from the selling of his businesses.
