After five years of freedom, and a few months after he fulfilled the dream of his father Carmine (right) and succeeded him as boss of the crime family, Alllie, 45, joins his jailed-for-life father in prison again.

Young Persico pleaded guilty last week in Ft. Lauderdale to gun charges that carry about 18 months in prison. The following day, Persico indicated he was looking to throw in the towel in his racketeering case in Brooklyn.

In an Oct. 15 letter to U.S. Magistrate Judge Cheryl Pollak, Persico's lawyer Barry Levin requested a three week adjournment in the case to try and work out a plea deal with assistant U.S. attorney Jim Walden. Neither would discuss the negotiations but Gang Land expects a deal to be worked out.

Persico was arrested a week earlier when a task force of FBI agents and NYPD detectives found $25,000 and $1 million in alleged loan sharking records during a search of his Brooklyn apartment.

Levin and law enforcement sources said the raiders were looking for a cell phone the feds believed would link Persico to the suspected murder earlier this year of underboss William (Wild Bill) Cutolo (right.)

Cutolo was a long time Persico rival whose crew killed several Persico loyalists during a bloody family war that left 12 dead and many wounded form 1991 to 1993. Persico, who was in jail during the Colombo war, was indicted on murder and racketeering charges stemming from the war. He was acquitted in 1994.

During the war, mobsters who backed then-acting boss Victor (Little Vic) Orena as  "official" boss" battled gangsters loyal to Carmine Persico, who wanted his son Alphonse to take over the family when he was released from prison.

Though outgunned, the Persico faction won the war and Carmine's dream came true. For Alphonse however, it's been a nightmare.

When an FBI-NYPD raiding party searched Persico's Brooklyn apartment, they found a copy of a Mar. 29, 1999 arrest complaint against Catalano. The complaint detailed how Fat Patty, who died of natural causes a a week after his arrest, was duped by a drug dealer who had passed himself off as an expert at detecting electronic surveillance.  

The drug dealer's debugging talents were "largely fiction," but because he once found a bug at a Middle Village, Queens social club, Catalano and other members of the Colombo family hired the drug dealer "to sweep their homes, cars and social clubs" for electronic surveillance, said the complaint.

The ruse ended on Dec. 19, 1996, when prosecutors for Queens District Attorney Richard Brown (left) charged Catalano with loansharking based on conversations picked up on bugs in Catalano's home and social club.

A few weeks later, when Catalano heard himself and his underling "having a detailed conversation about his sweeping activities" on a tape recording, he blew up and gave the blowhard debugger an offer he couldn't refuse.

Either show up at Catalano's Middle Village social club and take a beating like a man or be killed like a dog.

When he showed up, said the complaint, Catalano enforcer Vito Guzzo "split his head open with a fire extinguisher," telling him as he did "that the beating had been ordered by Patty."

The beating victim, battered, bruised but wiser, was later treated, and ultimately released, from a local hospital.

Guzzo, 33, a member of a loosely knit group of wannabe mobsters known as the "Giannini crew" pleaded guilty last year to federal racketeering and murder charges and received 38 years.

Catalano pleaded guilty to loansharking and was sentenced to a year in prison. A week after his arrest, Catalano died of natural causes at age 67.

"Dear Frank, even though you have gone away, you are never very far from us," began one that ended, "Loving you, Mom & Dad."

In what has become an annual ritual, Victoria Gotti placed five in memoriam notices in the New York Daily News expressing the entire family's unending love for her son Frank, who would have turned 31 on Oct. 15.

Three day later, Junior surrendered at the medium security federal prison in Ray Brook, N.Y. -- about 300 miles north of New York City in the Adirondack Mountains.

"He'll be in shock," said Dorothy Yanchitis, owner of the Borne and Bread bake shop in Ray Brook, which is close enough to the prison that she can hear the guards taking target practice. "I'm a transplanted Long Islander myself, and believe me, it's pretty cold here."

"It'll be nice for him," she said. "A nice change. He'll love it."

Gotti won't be able to visit or telephone his jailed-for-life father while they are both in jail, but he may receive permission to write his father so long as proper security provisions are met, said spokesman Scott Wolfson.

Gotti, 35, who was sentenced last month to six years and five months in prison for racketeering, bribery, extortion, gambling and bank fraud, is scheduled to be released Sept. 8, 2004.