In fact, the jury tampering/obstruction of justice case was very much an R-rated melodrama, with a steamy plot line, which had the aging former head of the Colombo crime family's ex-lover -- a willowy, maybe even wily, lawyer and former hairstylist at a barber shop frequented by mobsters -- putting the screws to him and making off with a younger gangster, who had contracted AIDS.

And to top it off, the prosecution tried to stretch it into the twilight zone by arguing that Russo's jury tampering essentially made him an accomplice to murder.

So it's pretty understandable that Russo would explode in anger and frustration the other day when he was sentenced to 57 months for jury tampering in Brooklyn Federal Court. It was the postscript to a soap opera mob drama that included a color-coordinated jury, furtive sex in jail, screaming matches between wives and girlfriends, James Caan, Laine Kazan, cha-cha lessons, mysterious addresses in phone books, an hysterical juror, FBI agents with bad memories and other cartoon-like inanities too numerous to name or explain.

Those four years and nine months will be added to 123 months he faces for parole violation and a racketeering/restraint of trade conviction for being the mob muscle in a lucrative scam involving the private carting business on Long Island.

"I got to give you credit, (assistant U.S. attorney Daniel) Dorsky, you ended up getting 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," said Russo.

Russo, who is 65 and briefly succeeded his jailed-for-life cousin Carmine (Junior) Persico (right) as Colombo boss, was convicted in January of trying to tamper with a Brooklyn Federal Court jury after it had found his son guilty of racketeering and murder in 1994. Since Russo's conviction, Persico's son Alphonse (left) has taken over the crime family, according to the FBI.

Dorothy Fiorenza, who had a whirlwind eight month fling with Russo the following year, testified that she helped him try to reach an anonymous juror who had convicted his son, Joseph, a capo in the crime family.

Dorsky added a novel twist when he asked Judge David Trager to sentence Russo to 20 years on the grounds that Russo, by trying to tamper with a murder conviction, was, in effect, an accomplice after-the-fact to murder.

At a presentencing session,  Russo ripped the inventive prosecutor as a "wimp and a coward."

Trager ultimately rejected Dorsky's motion, and said he would cut Russo's 57 month sentence by 11 months if Russo receives the maximum 63 months he expects to get for violating parole by associating with known criminals-- a seven-minute tete a tete with reputed underboss Joel (Joe Waverly) Cacace on May 20, 1996.

Russo was underwhelmed. "I'll be 78, if I live that long," he said.

"You look pretty healthy," said Trager.

Russo, whom Dorsky claimed was a millionaire, did win a minor point at the very end. Pleading poverty, he convinced Trager to rescind a $20,000 fine.

"I don't even own a suit," said Russo, who appeared for sentencing in federal prison blues and who wore a sweater during his trial.

John A. (Junior) Gotti, (right) about to go off to federal prison for the next six years or so, is trying to sell his Long Island mansion and buy less expensive living quarters for the wife and four children of a first time convict.

The Junior Don has two weeks to raise $1million to satisfy his plea deal with the feds, but he's not that hard pressed for cash that he's going to take less than a fair market price, according to his lawyer, Sarita Kedia.

Gotti, who paid $717,000 in 1995 for the 14 room colonial mansion in upscale Mill Neck that sits on three choice acres overlooking Oyster Bay Harbor, is looking for about $2.5 million.

Meanwhile, the three sons (Thomas, Joseph and Carl) and daughter (Phyllis Sinatra) of Carlo Gambino, the man who gave the crime family its name, sold a 103 acre plot of undeveloped land in Hollywood Fla. last month for a cool $5.5 million -- land their father and the late Philadelphia Mafia boss Angelo Bruno got dirt cheap some 50 years ago.

The children and Bruno's widow sold the parcel to a developer who plans to build 441 houses priced between $150,000 and $350,000, according to the Miami Herald.

Thomas Gambino, (right) a crime family capo arrested the same December, 1990 night as his father's successor, John Gotti, was tried separately from the Dapper Don, convicted, sentenced to five years, and due out next year. His home-away-from-home is a federal penitentiary in Allenwood, Pa. and  "made obtaining his signature on the land deed a complicated procedure," wrote Herald real estate columnist Barbara DeLollis.

Broward County officials were not aware of any sell-off trend among relatives of Mafia figures, who bought up many acres of undeveloped, and at the time, virtually worthless Florida land half a century ago.

"I know I've heard of that family, but I couldn't tell you a crime family from a
church-going group," said Joe Zdanowicz, Broward's chief property appraiser.

During a jailhouse visit with his brother Peter and daughter Victoria, (right) the once Dapper Don  railed on about the unlikely cast of "creatures" with whom Junior had been indicted. He recalled a 1982 meeting he had with Castellano at his palatial "White House" on Staten Island, on a videotape recently viewed by Gang Land.

"Paul Castellano, he spent the whole Sunday morning (with me.) He got me out of bed -- you know how I love to get out of bed -- at seven o’clock in the morning," Gotti began, separated from his visitors by thick plexiglass and speaking on a telephone hookup. "He was telling me there was this case, Roy Demeo and a bunch of asshole kids."

Gotti was referring to a then-pending federal investigation that had linked Castellano to a vicious crew of car thieves and drug dealers who killed scores of people, dismembered their bodies, and disposed of them in a county dump. (For the very few of you who don't know, they were the subjects of "Murder Machine," a critically acclaimed book by Gene Mustain and yours truly.)

"He says, 'how am I in this indictment with these people? Look at these people. Not one of them is human.' And that’s what I see with this indictment here," said Gotti, who berated his son's codefendants.

In particular, he singled out Steve Sergio, whose nickname is Sigmund The Sea Monster. "Where did these creatures emerge from?" Gotti asked angrily.

Of course, Gotti didn't mention that Castellano had summoned Gotti to his home to ask him to kill DeMeo, a contract that Gotti managed to avoid. Ultimately, DeMeo, a Gambino soldier, was killed by his mob sponsor and two surviving members of his crew under the direction of Frank  DeCicco, who became Gotti's first underboss after they killed Castellano in December, 1985.

Gene Mustain and I gave a more expanded account of Gotti's January 1998 videotaped conversations with his family in the Aug. 2 & Aug. 3 1999 issues of the New York Daily News. They are no longer available online.