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Three and a half years ago, the Luchese capo was in a federal lockup in Brooklyn looking at a very long stretch behind bars. Zappola, 40, pleaded guilty to racketeering and murder. He got  22 years, and is due out in 2014. He decided it might be nice to have a fully grown son waiting for him when he got out of prison.

Federal prisons don't allow conjugal visits, so the only way Zappola could father a son while jailed at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn was to smuggle his sperm out and get it to a fertility clinic.

With help from a mob associate, a Brooklyn clothier, a corrupt prison guard and the child's intended mother, Zappola accomplished this feat but he

Zappola and a Bensonhurst, Brooklyn woman (we'll call her Connie)  concocted the plan in the fall of 1996, according to special agent Stephen  Grogan of the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General.

Connie, a daughter of a Colombo mobster who was killed two decades ago, "agreed to be artificially inseminated with (Zappola's) sperm,"Grogan said in an arrest complaint against the clothier in the alleged scheme.

At Zappola's direction, Connie delivered $500 and two empty plastic medical vials she had gotten from a fertility clinic to David Hage, who   owns a men's store called Gentlemen's Quarters, Grogan wrote.

Connie instructed Hage to give the vials and $500 worth of clothing to Derryl Strong, (right) an MDC correction officer allegedly on the payroll of jailed mobsters who managed to enjoy wine and assorted Italian culinary goodies instead of the institutional food served to other inmates, said Grogan.

Anthony Albanese, 32, (left) a Luchese associate was an alleged player in the sperm caper. He pleaded guilty to bribery charges, harboring Zappola while he was a fugitive from 1990-to-1995, and was sentenced to 20 months.

In October, 1996, Strong picked up the vials and brought them to Zappola,

On Oct. 23, Zappola (right) gave two sperm-filled vials to Strong, who smuggled them out of the prison and gave them to a friend of Connie's a block away from the MDC. ("Isn't it great, the more obvious the less  suspicious,"Strong said during another corrupt deal, according to court papers.) Connie's friend delivered the sperm to a Manhattan fertility clinic which froze and stored the sperm for future insemination, the complaint said.

After the sperm was safely tucked away at the fertility center, Connie gave Hage another $500 for Strong, said Grogan.

Strong used the credit to purchase a $127.50 blazer, a $247.50 pair of shoes, and a mock-turtleneck sweater for $47.50. Including tax, the bill came to $457.48, according to the complaint. Sources said Strong took the balance of the $500 in cash.

Strong, 42, was one of 11 correction officers arrested on bribery charges in May, 1997 in an investigation - dubbed Badfellas - into rampant corruption at the MDC, but was not charged in the sperm caper. And the bribery charges were dropped after  the feds learned their jailhouse informer had been dealing drugs while working undercover against Strong, who was fired last fall.

In the meantime, Connie changed her mind about artificial insemination and cooperated in the federal investigation for a time. Ultimately, however, she changed her mind about that too, and the charges against Hage, the only one arrested in the case, were dismissed. "My client never did anything wrong," said his   lawyer, Joseph Mure Jr. "They never had a case against him."

Prosecutors said Radonjich tampered with the jury that began the Dapper Don's five year reign as the Teflon Don but that the recent arrest of turncoat underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano had eliminated him as a viable witness against Radonjich.

In a 1992 tampering trial of juror George Pape, a long time friend of Radonjich, Gravano (right) testified that he gave $60,000 to Radonjich that the Westies boss funneled to a juror who promised to vote for acquittal and try to convince his fellow jurors to do the same.

Pape was convicted and sentenced to three years but Radonjich, a Yugoslav immigrant, fled to his homeland and became freedom fighter for the Serbs. He was arrested New Years Day at Miami International Airport at a Customs check.

Radonjich is still in custody, accused of giving a false address to customs inspectors, a minor charge that his lawyer, Lawrence Hochheiser, predicts  will soon go the same way as the jury tampering indictment.